One Sided Love Poems: 8 Sad Tales Of Love Gone Awry

Unrequited or one sided love is a theme that runs common in the literature of the world throughout the centuries, and we’ve compiled eight of the best one sided love poems that will empathise with your very own feelings and predicament.

Sir Thomas Wyatt speaks of being surrounded by lovers, but somehow never getting any love – a fate that some might exchange for their own predicament, but one that the poet laments as most unfortunate. Sir Wyatt talks of how many lovers visit his bed, but seek to flee his side when the morning comes, viewing the exchange as transactional and mechanical, invoking no feelings of love in the poet, who so desperately seeks that elusive someone. Talk about gut-wrenching one sided love poems!

Stanley Kunitz speaks of how he had a dream in which he was old, much older than he is now. He saw how his lover lay dead by his side, and how his youth and exuberance have been exchanged for wisdom. The poet, however, feels that wisdom is not worth having, at least at the cost of youth, and laments his position, and that of everyone else like him – those who will lose their love like he did, and weep over one sided love poems and lost youth.

One sided love or unrequited love doesn’t only mean that the other never returned your affections. In fact, many a time it is none other than ourselves that drives that love away, as we deal with conflicting feelings and contrasting emotions. Shakespeare here, in one among his many one sided love poems, talks of how he doesn’t quite trust love but wants it anyway – a feeling that not too many on the planet are unfamiliar with.

The poet here talks of how, when he was thirty, he made his heart his “wife,” so to speak. No longer would he have to clamour for the affections of women and be rejected, no longer would he have to suffer the pain and ignominy of unrequited love, now he has his “love” by his side all the time, and as he changes with time, there is no danger of his own heart betraying him, for it changes with him. Put’s a whole new spin on marrying yourself.

Donne talks of being awoken by his love and thinking her to be an angel. But, as he alights from his bed and leaves his groggy state, he realises that she is in fact not an angel, and it would be folly to think of her as anything except her very own self. He speaks of how he loves the idea of being in love, but is fearful and untrusting of love as well, and the fact that his love comes to him not out of heart and purity of love, but fear and shame as well. Tragically, quite a few one sided love poems, and a bulk sum of humanity view love in the same light.

A.E. Housman tells a fairly familiar story in four lines of hard hitting verse, in a powerful scathing string of truth on one sided love poems. Talking about how being abandoned is not a surprise and revealing a low self esteem that is so commonly brought about as a result of unrequited love, the poet says that moving on was the only choice, even if they had to rip up their hearts in the process.

Sara Teasdale experiences an emotion that is common to romantic relationships and one sided love poems across the globe – the fact that she longs for the lover to love her deeper and more meaningfully than he does. She longs to be lost in him, for him to match her desire and commitment, but just as is the case so often, whether her desires will be met or that she will wait in vain is all up to fate…

Yeats puts the old adage “only fools rush in” into beautiful verse like only he can. He talks of how signing one’s heart away right at the outset is most foolish, and opening yourself up to a world of hurt. He talks of how it never gives the other person a chance to win your heart, and how the passion fades from “kiss to kiss” until it is no more, and that one who gave his (or her) heart away too soon, is left with nothing but pain for their troubles.

One Sided Love Poems: 8 Sad Tales Of Love Gone Awry

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