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Famous Abandoning Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...t, that springs
Our of the East, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

Our of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, whic...Read more of this...



by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...gave the signal to his fierce Mongolian horde;
With a frightful burst of fireworks the Chinks they swarmed aboard.
Abandoning their sampans, and their pullaways and junks,
They battened down the hatches on the crew within their bunks.

Then Griddlebone she gave a screech, for she was badly skeered;
I am sorry to admit it, but she quickly disappeared.
She probably escaped with ease, I'm sure she was not drowned--
But a serried ring of flashing steel Growltiger did...Read more of this...

by Brodsky, Joseph
...litted round the room,
causing my arrested glance to shift;
and if at any time a ghost had lived here,
he now was gone, abandoning this house....Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...his fireside chair insisting

On chapel three times on Sundays.

Only in retirement did joy and wisdom

Enter him, abandoning chapel he took

To the Friends or Quakers as they called them then

And somehow at seventy the inner light

Consumed him.

Gruff but kind was my impression:

He would take me for walks

Along abandoned railways to the shutdown

Pipeworks where my three uncles

Worked their early manhood through.

It would have delighted Auden and perhaps

...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...loats before us asking to be worn,

offering "we must think about objects at the very moment 
when all their meaning is abandoning them"

and "the title provides a protection from significance" 

and "we are responsible for the universe."

 *

I have put on my doubting, my wager, it is cold.
It is an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,
so coarse and woolen, also of unknown origin,
a barely apprehensible dilution of evening into
an outer garment, or, conv...Read more of this...



by Nwakanma, Obi
...lawless, 
stranger or wayfarer: 

It is the pod streaking with milk 
smelt so close, it vanishes, 
like the gecko abandoning her tail.  ...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...gh and strident faces
Obstreperous in her praise
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble,
Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,
And the inarticulate snow,
Leaving at last of her least signs and traces
None...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...and the smell. 

 Moving from their thatched huts 
 The crazed wood rats 
 By the thousand; grouse, spotted quail 
 Abandoning the hills 
 For the sparse trail 
 On which, exposed, I also packed. 

 Six weeks. I went back down 
 Through my own woods 
 Afraid of what I knew they'd done. 
 There, there, an A&P, 
 And not a tree 
 For Miles, and mammoth hills of goods. 

 Fat men in uniforms, 
 Young men in aprons 
 With one face shouting, "He is mad!" 
 I an...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...
That has no power to die--

He steers himself away from what is haunted 
By the old ghost of what has been before,-- 
Abandoning, as always, and undaunted, 
One fog-walled island more....Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...ngs over in this air:
The urgent snow is everywhere.
The wing adroiter than a sail
Must lean away from such a gale,
Abandoning its straight intent,
Or else expose tough ligament
And tender flesh to what before
Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.
Forceless upon our backs there fall
Infrequent flakes hexagonal,
Devised in many a curious style
To charm our safety for a while,
Where close to earth like mice we go
Under the horizontal snow....Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...hat's all the fame you need;
For 'tis impossible you should proceed.
Already I am worn with cares and age;
And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage:
Unprofitably kept at Heav'n's expense,
I live a rent-charge on his providence:
But you, whom ev'ry muse and grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and oh defend,
Against your judgment your departed friend!
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue;
But shade those laurels which descend to yo...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...rein shines,
Narcissus like, the Sun too pines.

Oh what a Pleasure 'tis to hedge
My Temples here with heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy Side,
Stretcht as a Bank unto the Tide;
Or to suspend my sliding Foot
On the Osiers undermined Root,
And in its Branches tough to hang,
While at my Lines the Fishes twang!

But now away my Hooks, my Quills,
And Angles, idle Utensils.
The Young Maria walks to night:
Hide trifling Youth thy Pleasures slight.
'Twere shame that such ju...Read more of this...

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