Poems About Longing
Curated by the Writory editorial team. Updated September 2026.
Quick answer: Read 13 classic poems about longing and absence, from Keats and Dickinson to Tennyson and Barrett Browning. Full texts with notes on what each reaches for.
Longing is love with the beloved missing. It is the ache of absence, the wish for what is out of reach, the eye fixed on an empty road. The poems here keep watch, and the watching is the whole poem.
Keats wishes he were as steadfast as a star. Dickinson learns to say a name she is not allowed to say. Tennyson stands outside a dark house where a friend no longer lives.
Anyone who has waited for someone will know this ground.
Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art
John Keats · Romantic
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Keats wants the star's steadiness but not its loneliness: to keep watch forever on the one he loves.
Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer's time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
Time apart turns high summer into bare December, and every ripe thing looks like an orphan.
Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful.
Walt Whitman · American
THIS moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;
It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, Italy, France, Spain--or far,
far
away,
in China, or in Russia or India--talking other dialects;
And it seems to me if I could know those men, I should become attached to them, as I do to
men
in my
own lands;
O I know we should be brethren and lovers,
I know I should be happy with them.
When I heard at the Close of the Day.
Walt Whitman · American
WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the
capitol,
still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d;
And else, when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy;
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing,
inhaling
the
ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing, bathed, laughing with the cool
waters,
and
saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend, my lover, was on his way coming, O then I was
happy;
O then each breath tasted sweeter--and all that day my food nourish’d me more--and the
beautiful
day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy--and with the next, at evening, came my friend;
And that night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the
shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me, whispering, to
congratulate
me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy.
Whitman finds that fame means nothing, and the day is only perfect once his friend is beside him.
I got so I could take his name
Emily Dickinson · American
I got so I could take his name --
Without -- Tremendous gain --
That Stop-sensation -- on my Soul --
And Thunder -- in the Room --
I got so I could walk across
That Angle in the floor,
Where he turned so, and I turned -- how --
And all our Sinew tore --
I got so I could stir the Box --
In which his letters grew
Without that forcing, in my breath --
As Staples -- driven through --
Could dimly recollect a Grace --
I think, they call it "God" --
Renowned to ease Extremity --
When Formula, had failed --
And shape my Hands --
Petition's way,
Tho' ignorant of a word
That Ordination -- utters --
My Business, with the Cloud,
If any Power behind it, be,
Not subject to Despair --
It care, in some remoter way,
For so minute affair
As Misery --
Itself, too vast, for interrupting -- more --
Dickinson works up to saying an absent name the way you test a healing wound, carefully, in private.
Absent Place -- an April Day --
Emily Dickinson · American
Absent Place -- an April Day --
Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow --
Drift may block within it
Deeper than without --
Daffodil delight but
Him it duplicate --
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 7. Dark house, by which once more I s
Lord Alfred Tennyson · Victorian
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more--
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Tennyson stands at dawn outside his dead friend's door, unable to knock, unable to leave.
Sonnet 21 - Say over again, and yet once over again
Elizabeth Barrett Browning · Victorian
Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem 'a cuckoo-song,' as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain
Cry, 'Speak once more--thou lovest! 'Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me--toll
The silver iterance!--only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.
She begs to hear the words said once more, knowing love needs repeating like the spring needs its cuckoo.
Tis the Last Rose of Summer
Thomas Moore · Romantic
Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone:
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither'd,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
One bloom left on the stem, and Moore cannot bear to leave it alone to fade.
The Lost Friend
Amy Levy · Victorian
The people take the thing of course,
They marvel not to see
This strange, unnatural divorce
Betwixt delight and me.
I know the face of sorrow, and I know
Her voice with all its varied cadences;
Which way she turns and treads; how at her ease
Things fit her dreary largess to bestow.
Where sorrow long abides, some be that grow
To hold her dear, but I am not of these;
Joy is my friend, not sorrow; by strange seas,
In some far land we wandered, long ago.
O faith, long tried, that knows no faltering!
O vanished treasure of her hands and face!--
Beloved--to whose memory I cling,
Unmoved within my heart she holds her place.
And never shall I hail that other "friend,"
Who yet shall dog my footsteps to the end.
Later life
Christina Rossetti · Victorian
Something this foggy day, a something which
Is neither of this fog nor of today,
Has set me dreaming of the winds that play
Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach,
And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray:
Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away,
So out of reach while quite within my reach,
As out of reach as India or Cathay!
I am sick of where I am and where I am not,
I am sick of foresight and of memory,
I am sick of all I have and all I see,
I am sick of self, and there is nothing new;
Oh weary impatient patience of my lot!
Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?
Secret Love
John Clare · Romantic
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where eer I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good bye.
I met her in the greenest dells
Where dewdrops pearl the wood blue bells
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.
I hid my love in field and town
Till een the breeze would knock me down,
The bees seemed singing ballads oer,
The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.
Clare loved in silence and never told her, and the poem is the telling he could not do.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a famous poem about longing?
Keats's 'Bright Star' and Shakespeare's Sonnet 97, 'How like a winter hath my absence been,' are two of the best known. Both ache with the distance between the poet and the one they love.
Are there short poems about missing someone?
Yes. Walt Whitman's 'This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful' and Emily Dickinson's 'Absent Place, an April Day' both catch the feeling in a handful of lines.
Which poets wrote about longing?
John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning all wrote about absence and yearning. This collection gathers their strongest short poems on it.
How to write a poem about longing
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