Cognitive semantics, as an interdisciplinary approach grounded in cognitive hypotheses and mental structures, provides a systematic framework for exploring the interaction between language, meaning, and human experience. Within this field, conceptual metaphors and image schemas function as fundamental mechanisms for transferring abstract meanings into concrete and experiential domains. These tools play a central role in understanding semantic processes and the representation of abstract concepts in literary texts. This study, using a descriptive-analytical approach, investigates the conceptual and image-based metaphors of sorrow in the ghazals of Ebtehaj. Through cognitive-semantic analysis, it examines how the concept of sorrow emerges, is represented, and is semantically structured in his poetry. The findings reveal that sorrow in Ebtehaj’s poetry is semantically framed with both positive and negative connotations across diverse ontological, structural, image-schematic, and experiential domains. The concept is shaped within cognitive fields such as objects, animacy, nature, health, time, space, and nourishment, and is reflected through image schemas of force and motion. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the concept of sorrow is systematically and coherently embedded within relevant experiential domains and is conveyed to the reader through a range of cognitive patterns in a tangible and comprehensible manner.