Famous Come Back Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Back to the Border

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Alas! alas! this wasted Night
   With all its Jasmin-scented air,
   Its thousand stars, serenely bright!
   I lie alone, and long for you,
   Long for your Champa-scented hair,
   Your tranquil eyes of twilight hue;

   Long for the close-curved, delicate lips
   —Their sinuous sweetness laid...Read more of this...

A Back-log Song

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
De axes has been ringin' in de woods de blessid day,
An' de chips has been a-fallin' fa' an' thick;
Dey has cut de bigges' hick'ry dat de mules kin tote away,
An' dey's laid hit down and soaked it in de crik.
Den dey tuk hit to de big house an' dey piled de wood erroun'
In de fiah-place f'om ash-flo' to de flue,
While...Read more of this...

286. Song—Highland Harry back again

by Robert Burns
 MY Harry was a gallant gay,
 Fu’ stately strade he on the plain;
But now he’s banish’d far away,
 I’ll never see him back again.


Chorus.—O for him back again!
O for him back again!
I wad gie a’ Knockhaspie’s land
For Highland Harry back again.


When a’ the lave gae to their bed,
 I wander dowie up the glen;
I set me down and greet...Read more of this...

Seeing off Hermit Wen Back to Former Residence White Goose Peak in the Yellow Mountains

by Li Bai
Thousands of feet high towers the Yellow Mountains
With its thirty-two magnificent peaks,
Blooming like golden lotus flowers
Amidst red crags and rock columns.
Once I was on its lofty summit,
Admiring Tianmu Pine below.
The place is still traceable where the immortal
Before ascending to heaven made elixir out of jade.
Now you embark on your journey there alone---
Another Wen Boxue* I happened to meet---
Who've been to...Read more of this...

Back Yard

by Carl Sandburg
 Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an
 accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next
 month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits
...Read more of this...

I prithee send me back my heart

by Sir John Suckling
 I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine;
For if from yours you will not part,
Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?

Yet now I think on't, let it lie,
To find it were in vain;
For thou hast a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.

Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together?
O Love! where...Read more of this...

Music Swims Back To Me

by Anne Sexton
 Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A...Read more of this...

Going Back to School

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past 
And all the grey waves flamed to red again 
At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast 
The Sausalito lights burned suddenly 
In little dots and clumps, as if a pen 
Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills; 
The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills,...Read more of this...

Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee

by Emily Dickinson
 Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee
He shall not take thy Hand
Nor put his spacious arm around thee
That none can understand...Read more of this...

He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,

by Fernando Pessoa
He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,

Though he doth not advance who goeth back,

And he that seeks, though he on nothing chance,

May still by words be said to find a lack.

This paradox of having, that is nought

In the world's meaning of the things it screens,

Is yet true of the substance of pure thought

And there means something by the...Read more of this...

Out Back

by Henry Lawson
 The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought, 
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, 
and the sheds were all cut out; 
The publican's words were short and few, 
and the publican's looks were black -- 
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back. 

For...Read more of this...

Give Me Back My Rags #11

by Vasko Popa
 I've wiped your face off my face
Ripped your shadow off my shadow

Leveled the hills in you
Turned your plains into hills

Set your seasons quarreling
Turned all the ends of the world from you

Wrapped the path of my life around you
My impenetrable my impossible path

Just try to meet me now...Read more of this...

On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show

by Charles Bukowski
 they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
in midnight age
as we go along
holding dead hands.

and we would say
rather than delude the knowing:
a damn good show,
but hardly enough for a horse to eat,
and out on the sunshine street where
eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces
i decide again
that in theses centuries
they have done very...Read more of this...

Smiling back from Coronation

by Emily Dickinson
 Smiling back from Coronation
May be Luxury --
On the Heads that started with us --
Being's Peasantry --

Recognizing in Procession
Ones We former knew --
When Ourselves were also dusty --
Centuries ago --

Had the Triumph no Conviction
Of how many be --
Stimulated -- by the Contrast --
Unto Misery --...Read more of this...

For K. J. Leaving and Coming Back

by Marilyn Hacker
 August First: it was a year ago
we drove down from St.-Guilhem-le-Désert
to open the house in St. Guiraud

rented unseen. I'd stay; you'd go; that's where
our paths diverged. I'd settle down to work,
you'd start the next month of your Wanderjahr.

I turned the iron key in the rusted lock
(it came, like a detective-story clue,
in a manila envelope, postmarked

elsewhere, unmarked otherwise) while you
stood...Read more of this...

Back Home

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
 Thoughts, go your way home.
Embrace,
 depths of the soul and the sea.
In my view,
 it is
 stupid
to be
 always serene.
My cabin is the worst
 of all cabins - 
All night above me
 Thuds a smithy of feet.
All night,
 stirring the ceiling’s calm,
dancers stampede
 to a moaning motif:
“Marquita,
 Marquita,
Marquita my darling,
why won’t you,
 Marquita,
why won’t you love me …”
But why
...Read more of this...

The ones that disappeared are back

by Emily Dickinson
 The ones that disappeared are back
The Phoebe and the Crow
Precisely as in March is heard
The curtness of the Jay --
Be this an Autumn or a Spring
My wisdom loses way
One side of me the nuts are ripe
The other side is May....Read more of this...

Dream Song 111: I miss him. When I get back to camp

by John Berryman
 I miss him. When I get back to camp
I'll dig him up. Well, he can prop & watch,
can't he, pink or blue,
and I will talk to him. I miss him. Slams,
grand or any, aren't for the tundra much.
One face-card will do.

It's marvellous how four sit down-”beyond
my thought how many tables sometimes are 
in forgotten clubs
across & down the world....Read more of this...

So give me back to Death --

by Emily Dickinson
 So give me back to Death --
The Death I never feared
Except that it deprived of thee --
And now, by Life deprived,
In my own Grave I breathe
And estimate its size --
Its size is all that Hell can guess --
And all that Heaven was --...Read more of this...

In Back Of The Real

by Allen Ginsberg
 railroad yard in San Jose 
 I wandered desolate 
in front of a tank factory 
 and sat on a bench 
near the switchman's shack. 

A flower lay on the hay on 
 the asphalt highway 
--the dread hay flower 
 I thought--It had a 
brittle black stem and 
 corolla of yellowish dirty 
spikes like Jesus' inchlong 
...Read more of this...

The Things that never can come back are several --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Things that never can come back, are several --
Childhood -- some forms of Hope -- the Dead --
Though Joys -- like Men -- may sometimes make a Journey --
And still abide --
We do not mourn for Traveler, or Sailor,
Their Routes are fair --
But think enlarged of all that they will tell us
Returning here --
"Here!" There are typic "Heres"...Read more of this...

When they come back -- if Blossoms do --

by Emily Dickinson
 When they come back -- if Blossoms do --
I always feel a doubt
If Blossoms can be born again
When once the Art is out --

When they begin, if Robins may,
I always had a fear
I did not tell, it was their last Experiment
Last Year,

When it is May, if May return,
Had nobody a pang
Lest in a Face so beautiful
He might not look...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts LXX: Take Back Your Coins

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Take back your coins, King's Councillor. I am of those women you
sent to the forest shrine to decoy the young ascetic who had never
seen a women. I failed in your bidding.
Dimly day was breaking when the hermit boy came to bathe in
the stream, his tawny locks crowded on his shoulders, like a
cluster of morning clouds, and his limbs shining...Read more of this...

I Shall Come Back

by Dorothy Parker
 I shall come back without fanfaronade
Of wailing wind and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool Eternity-
A mild and most bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid,
But softly come where I had longed to be
In April twilight's unsung melody,
And I, not you, shall be the one afraid.

Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead
I shall come back to...Read more of this...

Give Me Back My Rags

by Vasko Popa
 Just come to my mind
My thoughts will scratch out your face

Just come into my sight
My eyes will start snarling at you

Just open your mouth
My silence will smash your jaws

Just remind me of you
My remembering will paw up the ground under your feet

That's what it's come to between us...Read more of this...

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