Parting and Broken Vows
Sad Long Distance Relationship Poems
Love PoemsSince There’s No Help Come Let Us Kiss and Part
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker tries to end love with finality, yet the closing lines reveal that love could still be revived. This makes the poem useful for sad long distance love, breakups, and unresolved feelings.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Parting: The poem begins with a formal goodbye and cancelled vows.
- Unresolved love: The final couplet shows that love is not fully dead.
- Pride and vulnerability: The speaker claims freedom while still hoping for recovery.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is dramatic, wounded, and controlled. The mood shifts from final separation to fragile hope.
Craft Literary Devices
- Personification: Love, Passion, Faith, and Innocence are treated like figures around a deathbed.
- Volta: The final turn changes the poem from farewell to possible revival.
- Extended metaphor: Dying love is imagined as a body near death.
Song to Celia
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
Overview Short Summary
The poem imagines love communicated through eyes, a cup, and a returned wreath. It fits long distance love messages because affection travels through symbolic gifts and memory.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Romantic exchange: Love is shown through pledges, kisses, and a sent wreath.
- Presence through objects: The beloved’s breath changes the wreath even after it is sent back.
- Desire: The speaker wants a love deeper than ordinary pleasure.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is elegant, admiring, and intimate. The mood is graceful and romantic.
Craft Literary Devices
- Symbolism: The cup and wreath become signs of love across distance.
- Hyperbole: The beloved’s breath gives the wreath lasting fragrance.
- Allusion: Jove’s nectar raises the beloved’s love above divine drink.
Wild Nights Wild Nights
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
Overview Short Summary
The speaker imagines how different the night would feel if she were with the beloved. The sea, compass, and chart make this a strong poem for longing across distance.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Desire: The poem turns absence into intense longing for nearness.
- Arrival: A heart in port suggests the safety of being with the beloved.
- Distance: Sea imagery makes love feel like navigation toward someone far away.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is passionate, urgent, and compressed. The mood is intense and intimate.
Craft Literary Devices
- Metaphor: Love is imagined as a voyage ending in a safe harbor.
- Exclamation: Repeated exclamations heighten emotional intensity.
- Symbolism: Compass and chart symbolize direction, distance, and the search for union.
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
’Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
Whose soul is sense cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Overview Short Summary
The poem tells lovers not to mourn physical separation because refined love expands rather than breaks. It is one of the most important classic poems for long distance relationships.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Spiritual love: True love is shown as something stronger than physical nearness.
- Distance: Separation becomes expansion, not rupture.
- Faithfulness: The compass image shows one lover steadying the other’s return.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is calm, intellectual, and deeply loving. The mood is reassuring rather than despairing.
Craft Literary Devices
- Extended metaphor: The compass comparison explains how two lovers remain connected while apart.
- Metaphysical conceit: Donne uses abstract and surprising comparisons to describe love.
- Contrast: Ordinary lovers are contrasted with spiritually refined lovers.
Sweetest Love I Do Not Go
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, ’tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lovest me as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil.
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep.
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker comforts the beloved before leaving, insisting that departure is not rejection. The final lines make it especially useful for missing-you long distance poems.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Reassurance: The speaker repeatedly tells the beloved not to fear the journey.
- Absence: Leaving is described as a temporary separation rather than an end.
- Emotional connection: The lovers keep each other alive through devotion.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is tender, comforting, and persuasive. The mood is anxious at first but finally reassuring.
Craft Literary Devices
- Analogy: The sun’s departure and return becomes a model for the speaker’s return.
- Paradox: The lovers are ‘ne’er parted’ even when physically separated.
- Personification: Destiny is imagined as an active force.
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