According to John Steinbeck, “All great and precious things are lonely.” Loneliness is a tough emotion, but ultimately, poetry can help us remember that everything we feel, from loneliness to heartbreak, is a normal human emotion that other people are also feeling as we speak.
These poems about loneliness are a great reminder that we all feel lonesome sometimes. Despite the unpleasant feelings that accommodate solitude, something beautiful, such as a great poem, can come from them.
William Wordsworth’s literary classic, ‘Daffodils,’ also known as ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ is one of the most popular poems in the English language. It is a quintessential poem of the Romantic movement.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is today considered one of T.S. Eliot’s most important contributions to modernism.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes’ by William Shakespeare is part of the “Fair Youth” sequence of poems. In these poems, the speaker expresses his love and adoration for a young man.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell’ by John Keats is a fourteen-line sonnet that is contained within one block of text. It expresses the speaker’s intention to find somewhere peaceful, in a valley, amongst trees, bees, and deer to live out his days.
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
‘Alone’ by Maya Angelou is a moving poem. It explores the topics of solitude and loneliness in a way that all readers should be able to relate to.
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams is a lighthearted poem in which the poet dances naked before a mirror. The poet, as he dances, admires himself and his own company, relishing his loneliness.
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
‘Talking in Bed’ by Philip Larkin depicts the difficulties a speaker has talking in bed with his lover. It’s a poem about how loneliness can invade even the most initmate moments.
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
‘Acquainted with the Night’ by Robert Frost is a personal poem that deals with themes of depression. It’s told, perhaps, from the poet’s own perspective.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
‘Ode on Solitude’ by Alexander Pope is a beautiful and peaceful poem. It asserts a speaker’s desire to live a good, simple life and go unnoticed by the world.
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
‘Mr. Flood’s Party’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson describes a man’s later years in life and how lonely he has become. It suggests that a long life is not always a blessing.
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
Jean Bleakney’s ‘Consolidation’ is a deeply personal poem about the act of rearranging the cowry shells that the speaker and her children gathered in the past.
‘The Double Shame’ by Stephen Spender conveys a depiction of what the world feels like when one loses a very important person in their life. Everything is transformed in a way that makes a living from day to day difficult.
‘Don’t kill yourself today’ by Hannah Dains is a thoughtful and powerful poem about suicide. The poet explores all the reasons someone has to stay alive and expresses her love for those struggling with depression.
‘Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea’ by Sylvia Plath explores imagination. Reality, the speaker realizes, doesn’t always live up to what one imagined.
‘Suicide’s Note’ is a three-line poem that speaks from the perspective of someone who wants to take their own life. They feel the “cool face” of the river asking them for a “kiss.”
‘Before She Died’ by Karen Chase is a poem about how someone’s death, or impending death, changes the way that one understands the world.
‘Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note’ (1961) is the titular poem of Amiri Baraka’s first collection of poems. This piece introduces a depressed narrator engrossed with the thoughts of dying.
‘A Country Life’ by Randall Jarrell gives a deeply felt depiction of the impacts of life, death and loneliness on one’s life before death finally comes.
‘A Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe describes a speaker’s waking and dreaming state and the brief moments of light and hope he experiences.
‘After Killing a Spider’ by Masaoka Shiki is a thoughtful poem. It describes the negative and dark effects of killing a spider.
‘Alone’ by Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates the poet’s best verse. Here, the tormented mind of the literary genius is unveiled and readers get a glimpse into his abrupt and troubled life.
‘Amethyst Beads’ by Eavan Boland alludes to Greek mythology and the suffering of a child, Persephone, after she was separated from her mother, Demeter.
‘Aviation’ by Alice Fulton is a poem about a single speaker’s highly relatable feelings of isolation in her small town. She sees herself as separate and alienated from those around her.
‘Blackberrying’ by Sylvia Plath explores decaying and flourishing life and human mortality. It was published in 1971 in Crossing the Water, after the poet’s death.