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Famous Adieu Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Raleigh, Sir Walter
...rongs bewrayed*, [revealed] 
Whose course was ever contrary to kind*: [nature] 
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu. 
Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew. ...Read more of this...



by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...mind a tributary strain. 
Sweet grove no more I visit you, no more 
Beneath your shades shall meditate my lay. 
Adieu ye lawns and thou fair hill adieu, 
And you O shepherds, and ye graces fair 
With comely presence honouring the day, 
Far hence I go to some sequest'red vale 
By woody hill or shady mountain side, 
Where far from converse and the social band, 
My days shall pass inglorious away: [3] 
But this shall be my exultation still 
My chiefest merit and my only ...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...
For she knows, if she display
All her hate, death soone would seaze me,
And of hideous torments ease me.

Then adieu, deare Flocke, adieu;
But, alas, if in your straying
Heauenly Stella meete with you,
Tell her, in your pitious blaying,
Her poore Slaues vniust decaying.


Tenth Song.


O deare Life, when shall it bee
That mine eyes thine eyes shall see,
And in them thy mind discouer
Whether absence haue had force
thy remembrance to diuorce
From...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...is a concealment needful in extreme;
And if I guess'd not so, the sunny beam
Thou shouldst mount up to with me. Now adieu!
Here must we leave thee."--At these words up flew
The impatient doves, up rose the floating car,
Up went the hum celestial. High afar
The Latmian saw them minish into nought;
And, when all were clear vanish'd, still he caught
A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow.
When all was darkened, with Etnean throe
The earth clos'd--gave a solitar...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...h.
And must we part? Ah, yes, it must be so.
Yet ere thou leavest me in utter woe,
Let me sob over thee my last adieus,
And speak a blessing: Mark me! thou hast thews
Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race:
But such a love is mine, that here I chase
Eternally away from thee all bloom
Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb.
Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast;
And there, ere many days be overpast,
Disabled age shall seize thee; and even then
Thou shalt ...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...that I should fondly part
From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!
Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade
Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!
To one so friendless the clear freshet yields
A bitter coolness, the ripe grape is sour:
Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour
Of native air--let me but die at home."

 Endymion to heaven's airy dome
Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,
When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows
His head throu...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...on I thought it sweet
To feed thee with the quarry of my bow,
And pour'd the lotus-horn, or slew the mountain roe.

Adieu! sweet scion of the rising sun!
But should affliction's storms thy blossom mock,
Then come again--my own adopted one!
And I will graft thee on a noble stock:
The crocodile, the condor of the rock,
Shall be the pastime of thy sylvan wars;
And I will teach thee in the battle' shock
To pay with Huron blood thy father's scars,
And gratulate his soul rejoic...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...
"Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel
"A greater love through all my essence steal."

XLI.
The Spirit mourn'd "Adieu!"--dissolv'd, and left
The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;
As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,
And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:
It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache,
And in the dawn she started up awake;

XLII.
"Ha! ha!" said she, "I knew not this...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...is eye alone proclaim'd — 
"We will not part! 
Thy band may perish, or thy friends may flee, 
Farewell to life, but not adieu to thee!" 

The word hath pass'd his lips, and onward driven, 
Pours the link'd band through ranks asunder riven; 
Well has each steed obey'd the armed heel, 
And flash the scimitars, and rings the steel; 
Outnumber'd, not outbraved, they still oppose 
Despair to daring, and a front to foes; 
And blood is mingled with the dashing stream, 
Which runs al...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...tioners; 
While Hyde provoked, his foaming tusk does whet, 
To prove them traitors and himself the Pett. 

Painter, adieu! How well our arts agree, 
Poetic picture, painted poetry; 
But this great work is for our Monarch fit, 
And henceforth Charles only to Charles shall sit. 
His master-hand the ancients shall outdo, 
Himself the painter and the poet too. 

To the King 

So his bold tube, man to the sun applied 
And spots unknown to the bright star descried, 
Sho...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
..., friendless, and alone !

Oh ! righteous Heaven ! 't was then my tortured soul
First gave to wrath unlimited control !
Adieu the silent look ! the streaming eye !
The murmured plaint ! the deep heart-heaving sigh !
Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds ;
He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds !
Now the last laugh of agony is o'er,
And pale in blood he sleeps, to wake no more !

'T is done ! the flame of hate no longer burns :
Nature relents, but, ah! too l...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...er wilt thou love and she be fair! 20 

Ah happy happy boughs! that cannot shed 
Your leaves nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 
And happy melodist unweari¨¨d  
For ever piping songs for ever new; 
More happy love! more happy happy love! 25 
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd  
For ever panting and for ever young; 
All breathing human passion far above  
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd  
A burning forehead and a parching tongue. 30 

Who are thes...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...in faery lands forlorn. 70 

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell 
To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75 
Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep 
In the next valley-glades: 
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 
Fled is that music:¡ªdo I wake or sleep? 80 ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...l Her 
breast. "I must demand
Your instant absence. Everard, but new
Returned, will hardly care for guests. Adieu."
"Eunice, you're mad." His brain began 
to reel.

XXXVI
He tried again to take her, tried to twist Her 
arms about him. Truly, she had said
Nothing should ever part them. In a mist She pushed 
him from her, clasped her aching head
In both her hands, and rocked and sobbed aloud. "Oh! Where 
is Everard? What does this mean?
So la...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ing of my horse's feet,
And saw the city which now I try to sing,
After long days of weary travelling.


VII.


Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago,
I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the ...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...O’Brien, you know the kind,

The ones that count, the ones I owe my job to.”

We nattered on and on until by way of adieu I read the final couplet

Of my Goodbye poem, the lines about ‘One Leeds Jimmy who could fix the world’s.

Duhigs once and for all/Write them into the ground and still have a hundred

Lyrics in his quiver.’



Pete Stifled a cough which dipped into a gurgle and sank into a mire

Of strangulated affect which almost became a convulsion until fina...Read more of this...

by Cowper, William
...eld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cried--Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by ba...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.

IV

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams;...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...k the rose?—
     Forgive, forgive, Fidelity!
     Perchance the maiden smiled to see
     Yon parting lingerer wave adieu,
     And stop and turn to wave anew;
     And, lovely ladies, ere your ire
     Condemn the heroine of my lyre,
     Show me the fair would scorn to spy
     And prize such conquest of her eve!
     VI.

     While yet he loitered on the spot,
     It seemed as Ellen marked him not;
     But when he turned him to the glade,
     One courteo...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...le from their hands they shower
Ambrosial blooms and flowers, no longer charm;
Tempe, no more I court thy balmy breeze,
Adieu green vales! Ye broider´d meads, adieu!
Beneath yon ruin'd abbey's moss-grown piles
Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve,
Where through some western window the pale moon
Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light;
While sullen sacred silence reigns around,
Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bower
Amid the mould'ring caverns dark a...Read more of this...

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