Poems About Sorrow

Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping, and watching for the morrow,--
He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Do not cheat thy Heart and tell her,
"Grief will pass away,
Hope for fairer times in future,
And forget to-day."
Tell her, if you will, that sorrow
Need not come in vain;
Tell her that the lesson taught her
Far outweighs the pain.
~ Adelaide Anne Procter


I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way;
But left me none the wiser,
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
~ Robert Browning Hamilton



There's no way to make sorrow light
But in the noble bearing; be content;
Blows given from heaven are our due punishment;
All shipwrecks are not drownings; you see buildings
Made fairer from their ruins.
~ William Rowley


Sorrow treads heavily, and leaves behind
A deep impression, e'en when she departs:
While joy trips by with steps light as the wind,
And scarcely leaves a trace upon our hearts
Of her faint foot-falls: only this is sure,
In this world nought, save misery, can endure.
~ Emma Catherine Embury




When the cold breath of sorrow is sweeping
O'er the chords of the youthful heart,
And the earnest eye, dimm'd with strange weeping,
Sees the visions of fancy depart;
When the bloom of young feeling is dying,
And the heart throbs with passion's fierce strife,
When our sad days are wasted in sighing,
Who then can find sweetness in life?
~ Emma Catherine Embury


When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions: first, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
For good Polonius' death, and we have done but greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear.
~ William Shakespeare