The HyperTexts
The Best Sentimental Poetry of All Time:
Definitions, Characteristics and Examples
Is sentimental poetry invariably bad?
Sentimental poetry has become the red-headed stepchild of the literary world. This is how the Wikipedia page on sentimental poetry describes the genre:
"Sentimental poetry is a melodramatic poetic form. It is aimed primarily at
stimulating the emotions rather than at communicating experience truthfully.
Bereavement is a common theme of sentimental poetry."
Thus sentimental poetry is overwrought and untruthful, and bereavement is
best avoided by serious poets! But are we hearing the whole story, the whole
truth? No,
I don't think so. Some of the very best poets wrote intensely sentimental poems, including William Blake,
Louise Bogan, Robert
Burns, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Langston Hughes, John Keats,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Milton, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Rainer
Maria Rilke, Sappho, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Tennyson,
Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Wyatt and William Butler Yeats.
I agree with Nelson Algren, who said: "[Sentimentality] is an indulgence in
emotion. You want men and women to be good to each other and you're very
stubborn in thinking that they want to be. Sentimentality is a kind of
indulgence in this hope. I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I
mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing. ...
It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the
literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it."
I will, however, go beyond Algren and say that sentimentality is not just about
wanting people to be better. It's often about wanting the world
to be better. For instance, we look back with nostalgia at childhood days and
pleasures that have been lost, wishing they could be regained. And there's
nothing wrong with that. I have long loved the song "House at Pooh Corner." Yes,
it's an unabashedly sentimental song, but it captures my own very human feelings
about my own very lost childhood. Contrary to the Wikipedia definition, it's a
very truthful song. And the poems on this page are
very truthful also. The first poem is about bereavement and it's stunningly
truthful, shatteringly truthful. Thus, I could not disagree more with the
Wikipedia BS.
While we have been brainwashed to believe that sentimental poetry is invariably
bad, I think there is a simple way to prove this is not true to ourselves,
and that is to read the best poets. Along the way, in addition to examples, I
will provide definitions and characteristics of sentimental poetry. Now here is "proof positive" that some of the
very best poems in the English language are sentimental poems ...
compiled by Michael R. Burch
Oscar Wilde wrote this poem for his sister Isola, who died at age
ten.
Requiescat
by Oscar Wilde
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
Definitions and Characteristics
Dictionary definition of "sentiment": One Merriam-Webster definition of
sentiment is "refined feeling; delicate sensibility especially as expressed in a
work of art." Thus sentiment in art can be a very good thing, in the right
hands. This will be my working definition for the poems on this page. And the
poems are my evidence.
My personal definition of "sentimental poetry": Sentimental poetry appeals to
the emotions. One might say that it "tugs at the heart strings." (This is not
necessarily bad and depends on the skill of the poet and
the likes and dislikes of individual readers.) A sentimental poem may
cause readers to feel affection, sorrow, melancholy, nostalgia, tenderness,
apprehension, etc.
My personal definition of "sentimentalism": Sentimentalism occurs in poetry when
poets attempt to summon unwarranted emotion from readers. This can be due to
inappropriate or unconvincing subjects, "gushiness" or excessive language,
insincerity, over-sincerity, whining, pleading, etc. If we call a poet a
sentimentalist, we are suggesting that he/she is trying too hard to summon
emotion from readers (and is probably failing).
Characteristics of sentimental poetry: A sentimental poem may have a "softer"
feel with softer-sounding words. For example, "Music When Soft Voices Die (To
—)" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which appears shortly on this page. A good
sentimental poem will touch and/or move many readers, while a bad sentimental
poem will leave many readers unmoved, nonplussed and perhaps irritated. The
extent to which readers are touched and moved by what I consider to be "good
sentimental poems" probably depends on several factors. These include, but are
not necessarily limited to: (1) the "inner nature" of the reader; (2) the
reader's affinity for the subject; (3) the reader's personal experiences; and
(4) the reader's personal prejudices either for or against sentiment in poetry
(someone who has been convinced that sentimental poetry is automatically "bad"
may reject it on sight).
William Butler Yeats's
poems of unrequited love for the beautiful and dangerous revolutionary Maud Gonne
are among the best in that genre. The first poem below is
a
loose translation of a Ronsard poem, in which Yeats imagines the love of his
life in her later years, tending a fire. The second poem, "The Wild Swans
at Coole," is surely one of the most beautiful poems ever written, in any
language.
When You Are Old
by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Wild Swans at Coole
by William Butler Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley may have been the most
notorious married couple of their era. He was a dashing romantic poet and
heretic who wrote a tract, "The Necessity of Atheism," that got him expelled
from Oxford. She was the daughter of one of the earliest feminist
writers of note, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the liberal philosopher William
Godwin. The couple spent the summer of 1816 with Lord
Byron. It was at this time that Mary conceived the story that became her famous
gothic novel Frankenstein. Six years later, her husband drowned at sea at age thirty.
Although he died young, Percy Bysshe Shelley is still considered to be one
of the greatest English poets. Here is one especially lovely example of his
wonderful touch with rhythm and rhyme:
Music When Soft Voices Die (To
—)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Louise Bogan is not as well known today as she should be. For me she is a major
poet, because of poems like "After the Persian," "Song for the Last Act," "Roman
Fountain" and "Juan's Song."
Song for the Last Act
by Louise Bogan
Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.
Now that I have your face by heart, I look.
Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.
Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.
Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.
Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.
It's amusing to consider what the "big name" literary journals would do with
this lovely, touching lullaby by William Blake. I'm sure they would reject it,
but what does that say about their understanding of poetry? I could have chosen
a number of other sentimental poems by Blake: "The Little Black Boy," "The Sick
Rose," or his poems about tygers, lambs and child chimneysweeps. But I'm a fan
of lullabies, and I wonder how many of the poets published by the "name"
journals could match this one of Blake's.
Cradle Song
by William Blake
Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night;
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.
Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy softest limbs I feel
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart doth rest.
O the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break.
Tom Merrill is one of my favorite contemporary poets, and this is one of my
favorite poems written by a living poet.
Come Lord and Lift
by T. Merrill
Come Lord, and lift the fallen bird
Abandoned on the ground;
The soul bereft and longing so
To have the lost be found.
The heart that cries—let it but hear
Its sweet love answering,
Or out of ether one faint note
Of living comfort wring.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an early advocate of women's rights, and a
staunch opponent of slavery. When she married Robert Browning, theirs became the
most famous coupling in the annals of English poetry.
How Do I Love Thee?
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Dylan Thomas's elegy to his dying father is one of the best villanelles in the English
language, and it remains one of the most powerful, haunting poems ever
written in any language.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953) despite being born in South Wales was "the
archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination—he was flamboyantly
theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his
work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling and a singing Welsh lilt."
Fern Hill
by Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and
climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and
barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang
slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of
praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and
dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sister Christina was also a poet, and perhaps the
better of the two.
Song
by Christina Rossetti
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
William Dunbar was one of the first great Scottish poets, and is also known for
his poem "Lament for the Makiris" (Lament for the Makers, or Poets).
Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar [1460-1525]
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.
Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet everywhere, no odor but bitter rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
Conrad Aiken was one of the sweetest singers among American poets.
Bread and Music
by Conrad Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,—
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
D. H. Lawrence is better known today for his novels, which include the
then-infamous Lady Chatterley's Lover, but he was also one of the better
early modernist poets.
Piano
by D. H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
William Shakespeare wrote his share of sentimental poetry. This has long been
one of my favorite poems of his.
Full Fathom Five
by William Shakespeare
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — ding-dong, bell.
Alfred Tennyson was the most famous of the British Poet Laureates. He is
remembered for short lyric poems like "The Eagle" and "Crossing the Bar," for
occasional poems like "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and for longer works
like "Ulysses" and "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Tears, Idle Tears
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Robert Burns was one of the best writers of sentimental poems and songs. He is
most famous today for one of the most sentimental songs of all time, "Auld Lang
Syne."
A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!
Mary Elizabeth Frye is, perhaps, the most mysterious poet who appears on this
page, and perhaps in the annals of poetry. Rather than spoiling the mystery, I
will present her poem first, then provide the details ...
Do not stand at my grave and weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep:
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starshine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I am not there; I did not die.
This consoling elegy had a
very mysterious genesis, as it was written by a
Baltimore housewife who lacked a formal education, having been orphaned at age
three. As far as we know, she had never written poetry before. Frye wrote the poem on a ripped-off piece of a brown grocery bag,
in a burst of compassion for a Jewish girl who had fled the Holocaust
only to receive news that her mother had died in Germany. The girl was
weeping inconsolably because she couldn't visit her mother's grave. When the poem was named Britain's
most popular poem in a 1996 Bookworm poll, with more than 30,000
call-in votes despite not having been one of the critics'
nominations, an unlettered orphan girl had seemingly surpassed all England's
many cultured and degreed ivory towerists in the public's estimation. Although the poem's
origin was disputed for some time (it had been attributed to Native American and other sources),
Frye's authorship was confirmed in 1998 after investigative research by Abigail
Van Buren, the newspaper columnist better known as "Dear Abby." The poem has
also been called "I Am" due to its rather biblical repetitions of the phrase.
Frye never formally published or copyrighted the poem, so we believe it is in
the public domain and can be shared, although we recommend that it not be used
for commercial purposes, since Frye never tried to profit from it herself.
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