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Famous Abandonment Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Seeger, Alan
...y heart would hover nigher 
To the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held. 


There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure, 
The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes, 
I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure 
Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies. 


Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them 
Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides 
Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behin...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...
The face—the limbs—the index from head to foot, and what it arouses; 
The mystic deliria—the madness amorous—the utter abandonment; 
(Hark close, and still, what I now whisper to you, 
I love you—-O you entirely possess me,
O I wish that you and I escape from the rest, and go utterly off—O free and lawless, 
Two hawks in the air—two fishes swimming in the sea not more lawless than we;) 
—The furious storm through me careering—I passionately trembling; 
The oath of the insepa...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...les,
the wool gabardine mix, with its grammatical weave, 
never never destined to lose its elasticity, 
its openness to abandonment, 
its willingness to be disturbed.

 * 

July 11 ... Oaks: the organization of this tree is difficult. Speaking generally 
no doubt the determining planes are concentric, a system of brief contiguous and 
continuous tangents, whereas those of the cedar wd. roughly be called horizontals 
and those of the beech radiating but...Read more of this...

by Rich, Susan
...
to Ágadez, retrace a landscape they'd always believed?

No cross-streets, no broken yellow lines; I feel relief at the abandonment

of my own geography. I know there's no surveyor but want to imagine

the aerial map that will send me above flame trees, snaking

through knots of basalt. I'll mark the exact site for a lean-to

where the wind and dust travel easily along my skin,

and I'm no longer satiated by the scent of gasoline. I'll arrive there

out of balance...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...tired limbs. My love for her is my life
flowing in its fullness, like a river in autumn flood, running with
serene abandonment. My songs are one with my love, like the murmur
of a stream, that sings with all its waves and current....Read more of this...



by Po, Li
...I sat srinking and did not notice the dusk,
Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress.
Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream;
The birds were gone, and men also few....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hreatening to
 consume me; 
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires; 
I will give them complete abandonment;
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades, and of love; 
(For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy? 
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?) 

8I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races; 
I advance from the people in their own spirit;
Here is what sings unrestricted faith. 

Omnes! Omnes! let others ign...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...t of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes love
like breakfast.
Out of the many houses come the hands
before the abandonment of the city,
out of hte bars and shops,
a thin file of ants.

I've been abandoned out here
under the dry stars 
with no shoes, no belt
and I've called Rescue Inc. - 
that old-fashioned hot line -
no voice.
Left to my own lips, touch them,
my own nostrils, shoulders, breasts,
navel, stomach, mound,kneebone, ankle,
touch them.

It m...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...bsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea,during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful. 


No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff
First greets the homeward-veering skiff
High o'er the land he saved in...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...come whole again, after long seeking for what is lost,
The same cry from the tortoise as from Christ, the Osiris-cry of abandonment,
That which is whole, torn asunder,
That which is in part, finding its whole again throughout the universe....Read more of this...

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