10 great nostalgia poems: poetry for nostalgic people

10 great nostalgia poems: poetry for nostalgic people.

Thinking about a series of nostalgia poems refers us to feelings such as melancholy, sadness, but above all to the memory of the past. We can even think that every memory is nostalgic, because even when we remember the happiest moments of our lives we do so knowing that they will not return.

In any case, nostalgia is something like the combination between memory and absence; a mix of emotions that produces pain, but also longing for a time already lost, for people who have left us behind, or that we have left along the way.

In a certain way, nostalgia is like looking over your shoulder and seeing the past from another perspective. That is why the poetry of nostalgia is, ultimately, a total and absolute redundancy. Without nostalgia there is no poetic fact.

The etymology of the word nostalgia refers to that pain for what has been left behind. It comes from Greek us, “return”; and somethings, “pain”. That is, the pain versus the desire to return. It is not in vain that the Greeks used this word to refer to the bitter feeling of those who were far from their land.

Poetry and nostalgia go hand in hand; and below we are going to develop some fundamental examples in this regard. These are, in our humble opinion, the 10 best nostalgia poems in our library:

1- Remember (Remember, Christina Rossetti)

Remember me when I’m gone,
far away, towards the silent land;
When you can no longer hold my hand,
nor do I, hesitating to leave, still want to remain.
Remember me when there is no more everyday life,
where you revealed to me our planned future:
Just remember me, you know it well,
when it is too late for consolations, prayers.
And even if you have to forget me for a moment
and then remind me, don’t be sorry:
because darkness and corruption leave
a vestige of the thoughts I had:
it’s better that you forget me and smile
that you should remember me in sadness.

Read Also: "The dark swallows will return": Gustavo Adolfo Becquer; poem and analysis

2- Remember Me, Lord Byron

Cry in silence my lonely soul,
except when my heart is
united to yours in heavenly alliance
of mutual sighing and mutual love.

Remember me!… Near my grave
do not pass, no, without giving me your prayer;
For my soul there will be no greater torture
than knowing that you have forgotten my pain.

Hear my last voice. It is not a crime
Pray for those who were. I never
I asked you for nothing: when I expire I demand you
May you shed your tears on my grave.

3- When You Are Old, WB Yeats

When you are old, gray and tired,
and nodding next to the fire you take this book,
and slowly you read, dreaming with the soft gaze
that your eyes once had, with their deep shadows;
how many adored your moments of joyful grace,
and they loved your beauty with false or true love;
but a man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
and loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down by the glow of the logs,
you murmur, a little sad, how love fled,
how it floated away over the mountains,
and hid his face among a multitude of stars.

4- Withered leaves (Withered leaves, Rosalía de Castro)

The roses on their trunks withered,
the white lilies on their stem erect
They dried up too,
and the angry wind snatched away its leaves,
snatched its scented leaves
that I will never see again.

Other roses later and other gardens
with white lilies on their stem upright
I have seen it flourish;
my eyes are already tired of crying,
instead of crying in them, they shed
drops of bitter gall.

5- The first time he kissed me (The First Time He Kissed Me, Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

The first time he kissed me,
It was on these fingers that they now write;
And since then they have grown in pure paleness,
Slow to shake other hands,
And lascivious to caress his lips
While the angels sigh.
That amethyst ring
Stay out of my sight,
Since that first kiss
He blessed his old home.
The second one passed higher than his ancestor,
And he looked for his forehead, half failing,
spilling over my hair,
Surpassing all rewards.
That was the peak of pain,
The very crown of love.
With hallowed sweetnesses
The third proceeded,
On my lips, pressing them
In a soft purple, perfect.
Since then, certainly,
I have said fully and proudly:
My Love, only mine.

Read Also: Astarthea: the angel of hell and wife of Astaroth

6- When I am Dead, my Dearest, Christina Rossetti

When I’m dead, my love,
Don’t sing sad songs for me,
Don’t plant roses in my head
Nor gloomy cypresses:
Be the green grass above me,
With dews and drops, wet me;
And if you wither, remember;
And if you wither, forget.

I will no longer see the shadows,
I won’t feel the rain,
I won’t listen to the nightingale
Singing his pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That neither grows nor falls,
I could happily remember,
And I could happily forget.

7- I am (I Am, John Clare)

I am: yet what I am no one knows or cares,
my friends abandon me like a lost memory;
I am the consumer of my evils,
They rise and disappear in the unconscious host,
like shadows in love and the oblivion of death;
and yet I am! And I live like the cast shadows

in the nothingness of contempt and noise,
in the living sea of waking dreams,
where there is no meaning of life or joy,
but the great shipwreck of the affections of my life;
always the most loved—the ones I loved the most—
They are now strangers, stranger and stranger still.

I long for places where man has never set foot;
a place where no woman has ever smiled or cried;
to live there with my creator, God,
and sleep as I slept sweetly in childhood:
lying undisturbed and unconcerned;
the grass below, the vaulted sky above.

8- Buried Love (Buried Love, Sara Teasdale)

I have come to bury love
under a tree,
In the tall black forest,
where no one can see it.