10 Best Famous Quitting Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Quitting poems. This is a select list of the best famous Quitting poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Quitting poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of quitting poems.

• All Famous Quitting Poems

 Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

 I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die--
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead--
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn
So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill--
Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare;
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but you'll never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess I got to--saw."
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful things I done.
And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law,
I often think of poor old Bill--and how hard he was to saw.

 Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
Into this sodden, nourishing afternoon I emerged,
partway toward a paycheck, halfway toward the weekend,
carrying the last mail and holding above still puddles
the books of noble ideas. Through the fervent branches,
carried by momentary breezes of local origin,
the palpable Sublime flickered as motes on broad leaves,
while the Higher Good and the Greater Good contended
as sap on the bark of the maples, and even I
was enabled to witness the truly Existential where it loitered
famously in the shadows as if waiting for the moon.
All this I saw in the late afternoon in the company of no one.

And of course I went back to work the next morning. Like you,
like anyone, like the rumored angels of high office,
like the demon foremen, the bedeviled janitors, like you,
I returned to my job--but now there was a match-head in
my thoughts.
In its light, the morning increasingly flamed through the window
and, lit by nothing but mind-light, I saw that the horizon
was an idea of the eye, gilded from within, and the sun
the fiery consolation of our nighttimes, coming far.
Within this expectant air, which had waited the night indoors,
carried by--who knows?--the rhythmic jarring of brain tissue
by footsteps, by colors visible to closed eyes, by a music
in my head, knowledge gathered that could not last the day,
love and error were shaken as if by the eye of a storm,
and it would not be until quitting that such a man
might drop his arms, that he had held up all day since the dew.

 How much grit do you think you've got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
You may talk of pluck; it's an easy word,
And where'er you go it is often heard;
But can you tell to a jot or guess
Just how much courage you now possess?
You may stand to trouble and keep your grin,
But have you tackled self-discipline?
Have you ever issued commands to you
To quit the things that you like to do,
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed,
Those rigid orders have you obeyed?

Don't boast of your grit till you've tried it out,
Nor prate to men of your courage stout,
For it's easy enough to retain a grin
In the face of a fight there's a chance to win,
But the sort of grit that is good to own
Is the stuff you need when you're all alone.
How much grit do you think you've got?
Can you turn from joys that you like a lot?
Have you ever tested yourself to know
How far with yourself your will can go?
If you want to know if you have grit,
Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit.

It's bully sport and it's open fight;
It will keep you busy both day and night;
For the toughest kind of a game you'll find
Is to make your body obey your mind.
And you never will know what is meant by grit
Unless there's something you've tried to quit.

 Broken in pieces all asunder, 
Lord, hunt me not, 
A thing forgot, 
Once a poor creature, now a wonder, 
A wonder tortur'd in the space
Betwixt this world and that of grace.

My thoughts are all a case of knives, 
Wounding my heart
With scatter'd smart, 
As wat'ring pots give flowers their lives.
Nothing their fury can control, 
While they do wound and prick my soul.

All my attendants are at strife, 
Quitting their place
Unto my face: 
Nothing performs the task of life: 
The elements are let loose to fight, 
And while I live, try out their right.

Oh help, my God! let not their plot
Kill them and me, 
And also thee, 
Who art my life: dissolve the knot, 
As the sun scatters by his light
All the rebellions of the night.

Then shall those powers, which work for grief, 
Enter thy pay, 
And day by day
Labour thy praise, and my relief; 
With care and courage building me, 
Till I reach heav'n, and much more, thee.

 The ocean heaves around us still
With long and measured swell,
The autumn gales our canvas fill,
Our ship rides smooth and well.
The broad Atlantic's bed of foam
Still breaks against our prow;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!

Against the bulwarks on the poop
I lean, and watch the sun
Behind the red horizon stoop —
His race is nearly run.
Those waves will never quench his light,
O'er which they seem to close,
To-morrow he will rise as bright
As he this morning rose.

How brightly gleams the orb of day
Across the trackless sea!
How lightly dance the waves that play
Like dolphins in our lee!
The restless waters seem to say,
In smothered tones to me,
How many thousand miles away
My native land must be!

Speak, Ocean! is my Home the same
Now all is new to me? —
The tropic sky's resplendent flame,
The vast expanse of sea?
Does all around her, yet unchanged,
The well-known aspect wear?
Oh! can the leagues that I have ranged
Have made no difference there? 

How vivid Recollection's hand
Recalls the scene once more!
I see the same tall poplars stand
Beside the garden door;
I see the bird-cage hanging still;
And where my sister set
The flowers in the window-sill —
Can they be living yet?

Let woman's nature cherish grief,
I rarely heave a sigh
Before emotion takes relief
In listless apathy;
While from my pipe the vapours curl
Towards the evening sky,
And 'neath my feet the billows whirl
In dull monotony!

The sky still wears the crimson streak
Of Sol's departing ray,
Some briny drops are on my cheek,
'Tis but the salt sea spray!
Then let our barque the ocean roam,
Our keel the billows plough;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!

[Pg 166]
 
SONNET CXLVII.
 
Po, ben puo' tu portartene la scorza.
 
TO THE RIVER PO, ON QUITTING LAURA.
 
 
Thou Po to distant realms this frame mayst bear,On thy all-powerful, thy impetuous tide;But the free spirit that within doth bideNor for thy might, nor any might doth care:Not varying here its course, nor shifting there,Upon the favouring gale it joys to glide;Plying its wings toward the laurel's pride,In spite of sails or oars, of sea or air.Monarch of floods, magnificent and strong,That meet'st the sun as he leads on the day,But in the west dost quit a fairer light;Thy curvèd course this body wafts along;My spirit on Love's pinions speeds its way,And to its darling home directs its flight!
 
Nott. 
 
Po, thou upon thy strong and rapid tide,This frame corporeal mayst onward bear:But a free spirit is concealèd there,Which nor thy power nor any power can guide.That spirit, light on breeze auspicious buoy'd,With course unvarying backward cleaves the air—Nor wave, nor wind, nor sail, nor oar its care—And plies its wings, and seeks the laurel's pride.'Tis thine, proud king of rivers, eastward borneTo meet the sun, as he leads on the day;And from a brighter west 'tis thine to turn:Thy hornèd flood these passive limbs obey—But, uncontrollèd, to its sweet sojournOn Love's untiring plumes my spirit speeds its way.
 
Wrangham.

 don't be so lazy maisie maisie
don't be so lazy please
i know it's snowing
and a hard wind's blowing
but nobody knows
at the rate we're going
what time we'll get home tonight

keep to the path for me timothy timothy
keep to the path for me please
my legs are aching
and my poor back's breaking
and everyone knows
the track you're taking
will not fetch us home tonight

i know the way see maisie maisie
i know the way so there
if you'll just stop talking
and keep on walking
before anyone knows
the track will be forking
and we'll almost be home tonight

you're going too fast for me timothy timothy
you're going too fast so there
my shoes are leaking
and my old heart's creaking
the devil may know
and he's not speaking
if we'll ever find home tonight

i'm a little bit hazy maisie maisie
i'm a little bit hazy here
the snowstorm is blinding
the track is too winding....
surely somebody knows
and will soon start minding
that we're not in our home tonight

you're too far in front of me timothy timothy
you're too much in front of me here
you should be guiding
not foolishly hiding.....
i don't think he knows
my life is subsiding....
he can go home without me tonight

what did i say see maisie maisie
what did i say see there
this thin track is splitting
and soon we'll be quitting
these woods that i know
we'll be comfortably sitting
by the fire in our home tonight

wait for the ghost of me timothy timothy
wait for the ghost of me there
no snow is falling
in the world that is calling
me now....will you know
it's not me who'll be drawing
the curtains in our home tonight

................ ................

don't be so lazy maisie maisie
don't be so lazy please
you may be past caring
but a meal needs preparing
don't say you didn't know
and don't stand there staring
be thankful you're safe-home tonight

SONNET XIII.
 
Io mi rivolgo indietro a ciascun passo.
 
ON QUITTING LAURA.
 
 
With weary frame which painfully I bear,I look behind me at each onward pace,And then take comfort from your native air,Which following fans my melancholy face;[Pg 13]The far way, my frail life, the cherish'd fairWhom thus I leave, as then my thoughts retrace,I fix my feet in silent pale despair,And on the earth my tearful eyes abase.At times a doubt, too, rises on my woes,"How ever can this weak and wasted frameLive from life's spirit and one source afar?"Love's answer soon the truth forgotten shows—"This high pure privilege true lovers claim,Who from mere human feelings franchised are!"
 
Macgregor. 
 
I look behind each step I onward trace,Scarce able to support my wearied frame,Ah, wretched me! I pantingly exclaim,And from her atmosphere new strength embrace;I think on her I leave—my heart's best grace—My lengthen'd journey—life's capricious flame—I pause in withering fear, with purpose tame,Whilst down my cheek tears quick each other chase.My doubting heart thus questions in my grief:"Whence comes it that existence thou canst knowWhen from thy spirit thou dost dwell entire?"Love, holy Love, my heart then answers brief:"Such privilege I do on all bestowWho feed my flame with nought of earthly fire!"
 
Wollaston.

 Soothing his Passions with a warb'ling Sound, 
A Shepherd-Swain lay stretch'd upon the Ground;
Whilst all were mov'd, who their Attention lent,
Or with the Harmony in Chorus went,
To something less than Joy, yet more than dull Content. 
(Between which two Extreams true Pleasure lies, 
O'er-run by Fools, unreach'd-at by the Wise )
But yet, a fatal Prospect to the Sea
Wou'd often draw his greedy Sight away. 
He saw the Barques unlading on the Shore, 
And guess'd their Wealth, then scorn'd his little Store.
Then wou'd that Little lose, or else wou'd make it more. 
To Merchandize converted is the Fold,
The Bag, the Bottle, and the Hurdles sold;
The Dog was chang'd away, the pretty Skell
Whom he had fed, and taught, and lov'd so well. 


In vain the Phillis wept, which heretofore
Receiv'd his Presents, and his Garlands wore. 
False and upbraided, he forsakes the Downs,
Nor courts her Smiles, nor fears the Ocean's Frowns. 
For smooth it lay, as if one single Wave
Made all the Sea, nor Winds that Sea cou'd heave; 
Which blew no more than might his Sails supply:
Clear was the Air below, and Phoebus laugh'd on high.
With this Advent'rer ev'ry thing combines,
And Gold to Gold his happy Voyage joins; 
But not so prosp'rous was the next Essay, 
For rugged Blasts encounter'd on the way, 
Scarce cou'd the Men escape, the Deep had all their Prey. 
Our broken Merchant in the Wreck was thrown
Upon those Lands, which once had been his own; 
Where other Flocks now pastur'd on the Grass, 
And other Corydons had woo'd his Lass. 
A Servant, for small Profits, there he turns, 
Yet thrives again, and less and less he mourns; 
Re-purchases in time th'abandon'd Sheep, 
Which sad Experience taught him now to keep. 
When from that very Bank, one Halcyon Day, 
On which he lean'd, when tempted to the Sea, 
He notes a Calm; the Winds and Waves were still, 
And promis'd what the Winds nor Waves fulfill, 
A settl'd Quiet, and Conveyance sure, 
To him that Wealth, by Traffick, wou'd procure.

But the rough part the Shepherd now performs,
Reviles the Cheat, and at the Flatt'ry storms. 
Ev'n thus (quoth he) you seem'd all Rest and Ease, 
You sleeping Tempests, you untroubl'd Seas, 
That ne'er to be forgot, that luckless Hour, 
In which I put my Fortunes in your Pow'r; 
Quitting my slender, but secure Estate, 
My undisturb'd Repose, my sweet Retreat, 
For Treasures which you ravish'd in a Day,
But swept my Folly, with my Goods, away. 
Then smile no more, nor these false Shews employ,
Thou momentary Calm, thou fleeting Joy; 
No more on me shall these fair Signs prevail, 
Some other Novice may be won to Sail, 
Give me a certain Fate in the obscurest Vale.