Mournful Poems – Poems About Sorrow
These are examples of popular mournful poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets.
Hqwords is a great educational poetry resource of famous mournful poems.
These examples illustrate what a good mournful poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
Popular Mournful Poems
Here are some good mournful poems for you to explore:
Lost Lover Prayer
Imagine your ice cold fingers
Like melting candle wax,
Seeping onto a window pane,
Waiting for the ever looming ******.
Imagine a bed of flower thorns,
Digging into your skin.
Convince yourself it’s normal,
Tell yourself to start again.
Wait patiently for the sound of the lark.
Wait quietly for the non-existent spark.
Tell all your friends and your ex lovers too,
Tell me what they think of you.
When morning is gone and night won’t start,
Make yourself pull apart
From the demons inside your soul.
I won’t follow them where they go.
If you cry before you wake,
Say one good prayer for goodness sake.
And if you die before you rise,
There’s nothing left to do.
Untitled by Heather Booth
I don’t understand,
And yet I do.
The clover is considered lucky,
I guess I need one to help me through,
I am blue and that is sad,
But the sky is blue is the sky sad?
I wear my raincoat to avoid the water,
And yet I cleanse my sorrows in a the wet embrace of a shower,
They wash away and run down the drain,
*A small weight off my back so I don’t waste away.
The Casket Maker’s Wife by Spysgrandson
she brings him tea,
a piece of cheese late morn
for he has been toiling since dawn
his plane shaving the wood reverently
the old oak speaking, though not complaining,
in a language the man does not understand
a coughing code for loss, forbearance, acceptance,
redemption, he hopes, for the boys keep coming…
first from Ypres, the Verdun,
now the Marne
before, he heaved hewn planks
for the hopeful homes, built their pantries
to be filled with the bread, the kind milk
now the sawn boards are for those who once
watched his labors, but no longer hear the simple
sounds of sanding, sawing
or anything at all
most of the lads do not come home,
their souls and bodies left to rot on the blood sullied grass
or buried shallow, naked in the French soil, but all get a fine coffin
thanks to the carpenter’s wife, whose babe was the first to fall,
who demands for them all, a holy horizontal home to be built
and, empty or not, placed gently in Anglican ground.