We’re in a bit of relationship heck right now (it’s been worse, so it’s not hell, but still…no fun) and I have Nothing Gold Can Stay running through my head. Any other favourite sad poems?
For sale:
Pair of baby’s shoes.
Never worn.
There once was a man from Nantucket…
Oh, jjimm. I’m going to have to write that down and have a good cry.
That’s a powerful one, jjim.
Second, I think, only to E.E. Cummings’ It May Not Always Be So -
*it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another’s, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be, i say if this should be–
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands. *
The one that always gets me is Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son”:
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy:
Seven years thou wert lent me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy,
To have so soon scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
And pretty much anything by Wilfred Owen. “Futility” is especially good, if you’re looking for sad poetry…
Try this one on for size:
*This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.
Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.
It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.
Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.
You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes with out guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.
O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
*
-Donald Justice
Well, since Katisha beat me to the Jonson poem, I’ll have to put in a vote for John Donne’s A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s What lips my lips have kissed.
Three tankas by Ono no Komachi.
Tomorrow at Dawn
Victor Hugo
Translated by: Henry Carrington
*Tomorrow morn, what time the fields grow white,
I shall set off; I know you look for me,
Across the forest’s gloom, the mountain height:
I can no longer dwell away from thee.
I’ll walk with eyes upon my thoughts intent,
Hearing no outer noise, seeing no sight;
Alone, unknown, hands clasped, and earthward bent,
Sad, and the day for me shall be as night.
On evening’s golden hues I shall not gaze,
Nor on the vessels that to Harfleur come;
But my quest o’er, upon thy grave shall place
A wreath of holly green, and heather bloom.*
These are the saddest of possible words,
Tinker to Evers to Chance…
This is one of Yeats’ finest:
How about a little dark humor from WWI?
Carol
While shepherds watched their flocks by night
All seated on the ground,
A high explosive shell came down
And mutton rained around.
–Saki (aka Hector Hugh Munro)
(1870- 14 November 1916)
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
–Stevie Smith
Okay, as much as I dislike the good Doctor Heaney at this moment in my life: