Famous Cancel Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Parting

by Michael Drayton
 SINCE there 's no help, come let us kiss and part-- 
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me; 
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, 
That thus so cleanly I myself can free. 
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, 
And when we meet at any time again, 
Be it not seen...Read more of this...

Nepenthe

by Henry Van Dyke
 Yes, it was like you to forget, 
And cancel in the welcome of your smile 
My deep arrears of debt,
And with the putting forth of both your hands 
To sweep away the bars my folly set
Between us -- bitter thoughts, and harsh demands, 
And reckless deeds that seemed untrue 
To love, when all the while
My heart was aching through...Read more of this...

Single Vision

by Stanley Kunitz
 Before I am completely shriven
I shall reject my inch of heaven.

Cancel my eyes, and, standing, sink
Into my deepest self; there drink

Memory down. The banner of
My blood, unfurled, will not be love,

Only the pity and the pride
Of it, pinned to my open side.

When I have utterly refined
The composition of my mind,

Shaped language of my marrow till
Its forms are instant to...Read more of this...

The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be...Read more of this...

His Boys

by Robert William Service
 "I'm going, Billy, old fellow. Hist, lad! Don't make any noise.
There's Boches to beat all creation, the pitch of a bomb away.
I've fixed the note to your collar, you've got to get back to my Boys,
You've got to get back to warn 'em before it's the break of day."

The order came to go forward to a trench-line traced on...Read more of this...

To G. M. W. And G. F. W

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Whenas—(I love that “whenas” word—
 It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
 The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey’s back
 Would carry thus a double load—
Father and son upon one jack,
 Galumphing down the Tibur Road.

II

Old is the tale—Aesop’s, I think—
 Of that famed miller and his son
Whose fortunes were so “on the...Read more of this...

The Visible The Untrue

by Hart Crane
 Yes, I being
the terrible puppet of my dreams, shall
lavish this on you—
the dense mine of the orchid, split in two.
And the fingernails that cinch such
environs?
And what about the staunch neighbor tabulations,
with all their zest for doom?

I'm wearing badges
that cancel all your kindness. Forthright
I watch the silver Zeppelin
destroy the sky. To
stir your confidence?
To rouse what sanctions—?

The silver strophe... the canto
bright...Read more of this...

London Bridge

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...

Where We Live Now

by Philip Levine
 1 

We live here because the houses 
are clean, the lawns run 
right to the street 

and the streets run away. 
No one walks here. 
No one wakens at night or dies. 

The cars sit open-eyed 
in the driveways. 
The lights are on all day. 

2 

At home forever, she has removed 
her long foreign names 
that stained her...Read more of this...

By the Earths Corpse

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

 "O Lord, why grievest Thou? - 
 Since Life has ceased to be 
 Upon this globe, now cold 
 As lunar land and sea, 
And humankind, and fowl, and fur 
 Are gone eternally, 
All is the same to Thee as ere 
 They knew mortality." 

II 

"O Time," replied the Lord, 
 "Thou read'st me...Read more of this...

Redemption

by George Herbert
 Having been tenant long to a rich lord, 
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold, 
And make a suit unto him, to afford 
A new small-rented lease, and cancel the old. 
In heaven at his manor I him sought; 
They told me there that he was lately gone 
About some land, which he had dearly bought 
Long since on...Read more of this...

An Indian Love Song

by Sarojini Naidu
 He

Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon 
of thy glory and grace,
Withhold not, O love, from the night 
of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,
Give me a spear of the scented keora 
guarding thy pinioned curls, 
Or a silken thread from the fringes 
that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;
Faint grows my soul with...Read more of this...

War Song

by John Davidson
 In anguish we uplift 
A new unhallowed song: 
The race is to the swift; 
The battle to the strong. 

Of old it was ordained 
That we, in packs like curs, 
Some thirty million trained 
And licensed murderers, 

In crime should live and act, 
If cunning folk say sooth 
Who flay the naked fact 
And carve the heart of truth....Read more of this...

Youth

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   I am not sure if I knew the truth
     What his case or crime might be,
   I only know that he pleaded Youth,
     A beautiful, golden plea!

   Youth, with its sunlit, passionate eyes,
     Its roseate velvet skin—
   A plea...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXI: Since Theres No Help

by Michael Drayton
 Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part, 
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me, 
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, 
That thus so cleanly I myself can free. 
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, 
And when we meet at any time again 
Be it not seen in...Read more of this...

Contemplation Of The Sword

by Robinson Jeffers
 Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel, 
 formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms 
 and counter-storms of general destruction; killing 
 of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or 
 less intentional, of...Read more of this...

Life

by Charlotte Bronte
 I leave the office, take the stairs,
in time to mail a letter
before 3 in the afternoon--the last dispatch.
The red, white and blue air mail
falls past the slot for foreign mail
and hits bottom with a sound
that tells me my letter is alone.
They will have to bring in a plane
from a place of coastline and beaches,
from a climate of fresh figs...Read more of this...

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