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Famous Endings Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Endings poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous endings poems. These examples illustrate what a famous endings poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Subraman, Belinda
...find there is no end.

Down to earth
there are frozen lines,
winter trees,
stalled cars in dirty snow,
sorrow over endings.

The real world is through the window,
infinite, ageless.
Though a clear veil
keeps us distant,
the soul of what 
we can never prove
keeps us close....Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...
How you'd exult if I could put you back 
Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony, 
Geology, ethnology, what not 
(Greek endings, each the little passing-bell 
That signifies some faith's about to die), 
And set you square with Genesis again,-- 
When such a traveller told you his last news, 
He saw the ark a-top of Ararat 
But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk 
And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot! 
How should you feel, I ask, in such an age, 
How act? As ot...Read more of this...

by Donne, John
...l, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings....Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise
...l, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings....Read more of this...

by Belieu, Erin
...d in legend, liable to judgment
and erosion; still, an appealing view,

to draft our lives, a series of vignettes
where endings could be substituted -
your father, unconvoluted
by desire, not grown bonsai in regret,

the bedroom of blue flowers left intact.
The room was nearly dark, the streetlight
a sentinel at the white curtain, its night
face implicated. Do not retract

this. Something did happen. You recall,
can feel a stumbling over wet ground,
the cave t...Read more of this...



by Berman, David
...four days of no weather
as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors.

They'd closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings
and my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud.

The evening edition carried the magic death of a child
backlit by a construction site sunrise on its front page.

I kept my back to her and fingered the items on the mantle.

Souvenirs only reminded you of buying them.

* * *

The moon hung solid over the boarded-up Hobby Shop...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...All the endings in my life
rise up against me
like that sea of troubles
Shakespeare mixed
with metaphors;
like Vikings in their boats
singing Wagner,
like witches
burning at
the stake--
I submit
to my fate.

I know beginnings,
their sweetnesses,
and endings,
their bitternesses--
but I do not know
continuance--
I do not know
the sweet demi-boredom
of life as it l...Read more of this...

by Tessimond, A S J
...ne might
Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight
One of the moment's hundred strands, unfray
Beginnings from endings, this from that, survey
Say a square inch of the ground one stands on, touch
Part of oneself or a leaf or a sound (not clutch
Or cuff or bruise but touch with finger-tip, ear-
Tip, eyetip, creeping near yet not too near);
Might take up life and lay it on one's palm
And, encircling it in closeness, warmth and calm,
Let it lie still, then stir smooth-s...Read more of this...

by Eliot, George
..."La noche buena se viene, 
La noche buena se va, 
Y nosotros nos iremos 
Y no volveremos mas." 
-- Old Villancico. 

Sweet evenings come and go, love, 
They came and went of yore: 
This evening of our life, love, 
Shall go and come no more. 

When we have passed away, love, 
All things will keep their name; 
But yet no life on earth, love, 
Wit...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...r wooden wings bruising the air,
their shadows the spilled milk the world cries over.

There is a need for surprise endings;
the green field where cows burn like newsprint,
where the farmer sits and stares,
where nothing, when it happens, is never terrible enough....Read more of this...

by Kees, Weldon
...ilot's relief on landing is no release.
These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and
 public endings--
Water and wind and flight, remembered words and the act of love
Are but interruptions. And the world, like a beast, impatient and
 quick,
Waits only for those who are dead. No death for you. You are
 involved....Read more of this...

by Hecht, Anthony
...ugh any of your books these days.
It's partly weariness, and partly the fact
That I seem not to care much about the endings,
How things work out, or whether they even do.
What I do instead is sit here by this window
And look out at the trees across the way.
You wouldn't think that was much, but let me tell you,
It keeps me quite intent and occupied.
Now all the leaves are down, you can see the spare,
Delicate structures of the sycamores,
The fine articulation ...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...the self-same schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,
His hopes, his endings, and began
To rate the Market's sordid war
As something scarce worth living for.

"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
"I'll further Truth and Purity;
Thereby to mend and mortal lot
And sweeten sorrow. Thrive I not,

"Winning their hearts, my kind will give
Enough that I may lowly live,
And house my Love in some dim dell,
For pleasing them a...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things