http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178165
POEM SAMPLER
Poems of Sorrow and Grieving
Classic and contemporary poems about ultimate losses

BY THE EDITORS

Remembering a Parent
Making a Fist -- by Naomi Shihab Nye
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

oh antic God -- by Lucille Clifton
oh antic God
return to me

Love Lost
Ae Fond Kiss -- by Robert Burns
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever!

And Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair-- by Lord Byron
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;

Ebb -- by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:

Epigrams: Epitaph on Elizabeth, L.H. -- by Ben Jonson
Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.

Death of a Child
An Arbor -- by Linda Gregerson
The world’s a world of trouble, your mother must
have told you
that. Poison leaks into the basements

The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad --by Robert Herrick
Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses

The Dying Child by -- John Clare
He could not die when trees were green,
For he loved the time too well

Grieving the Death of a Friend
Buried at Springs --by James Schuyler
There is a hornet in the room
and one of us will have to go

Elegy with a Chimneysweep Falling Inside It by -- Larry Levis
Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard
Compose the dark

Facing It -- by Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.

Regret & Depression
A Daughter of Eve-- by Christina Rossetti
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly

The Debt -- by Paul Laurence Dunbar
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,

Fragment 3: Come, come thou bleak December wind -- by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!

Originally Published: May 12, 2006