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10 of the Best Poems about Unrequited Love
interestingliterature
4 years ago
The best poems about pining away for love selected by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Love’ and ‘poetry’ go together to form a natural pair, but as Shakespeare pointed out, the course of true love never did run smooth. Sometimes the greatest lovers are those who pine away, hopelessly devoted to someone who will never return their affections. From the medieval courtly love tradition onwards, poets have been treating the subject of unrequited love. Here are ten of the best poems about love that is not reciprocated…
Sir Philip Sidney, ‘With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies’.
With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies;
How silently, and with how wan a face.
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries …
This poem, Sonnet 31 from Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, is a great Elizabethan poem about hopeless love (Stella, the object of Astrophil’s affections, is married to another man), although the sonnet appears to teeter on the edge of self-parody.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 87.
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving …
This is probably Shakespeare’s greatest poem about unrequited love – and we think it qualifies as an ‘unrequited love poem’ because, although the poet and the Fair Youth appear to have been in a relationship of sorts, with the younger man reciprocating the Bard’s affections, it’s clear Shakespeare feels that the Fair Youth is out of his league and doesn’t really love the poet the way he loves him.
John Clare, ‘The Secret’.
I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song …
This poem by an often-overlooked voice in Romantic poetry, John Clare (1793-1864), strikes to the heart of what many of us have felt at some time in our lives: having kept his love of somebody a secret, the poet is doomed to transfer or deflect that love onto other people who remind him of his first, true love. Not so much a lost love as a love never had, this one – but poignant and affecting nevertheless.
