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Famous Departing(A) Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...LEANDER. 
No more of Memphis and her mighty kings, 
Or Alexandria, where the Ptolomies. 
Taught golden commerce to unfurl her falls, 
And bid fair science smile: No more of Greece 
Where learning next her early visit paid, 
And spread her glories to illume the world, 
No more of Athens, where she flourished, 
And saw her sons of mighty genius rise 
Smooth ...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry



...What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist


TELL me not in mournful numbers  
Life is but an empty dream!¡ª 
For the soul is dead that slumbers  
And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 5 
And the grave is not its goal; 
Dust thou art to dust returnest  
Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment and not ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slop...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Through thick Arcadian woods a hunter went, 
Following the beasts upon a fresh spring day; 
But since his horn-tipped bow but seldom bent, 
Now at the noontide nought had happed to slay, 
Within a vale he called his hounds away, 
Hearkening the echoes of his lone voice cling 
About the cliffs and through the beech-trees ring.

But when they ended, still aw...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...Mean while the heinous and despiteful act 
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how 
He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve, 
Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit, 
Was known in Heaven; for what can 'scape the eye 
Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart 
Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just, 
Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind 
Of Man, with str...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn 
From his displeasure; in whose look serene, 
When angry most he seemed and most severe, 
What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone? 
So spake our father penitent; nor Eve 
Felt less remorse: they, forthwith to the place 
Repairing where he judged them, prostrate fell 
Before him reverent; and both confessed 
Humbly...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...'The mist is resting on the hill;
The smoke is hanging in the air;
The very clouds are standing still:
A breathless calm broods everywhere.
Thou pilgrim through this vale of tears,
Thou, too, a little moment cease
Thy anxious toil and fluttering fears,
And rest thee, for a while, in peace.' 

'I would, but Time keeps working still
And moving on for good or...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Anne
...1
WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan! 
Head from the mother’s bowels drawn! 
Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one! 
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown! 
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean’d, and to lean on. 

Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes—masculine trades, sights and sounds; 
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Summer has two Beginnings --
Beginning once in June --
Beginning in October
Affectingly again --

Without, perhaps, the Riot
But graphicker for Grace --
As finer is a going
Than a remaining Face --

Departing then -- forever --
Forever -- until May --
Forever is deciduous
Except to those who die --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, where every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er your green,
Where humble happiness endear...Read more of this...
by Goldsmith, Oliver
...THE PROLOGUE.


Our Hoste saw well that the brighte sun
Th' arc of his artificial day had run
The fourthe part, and half an houre more;
And, though he were not deep expert in lore,
He wist it was the eight-and-twenty day
Of April, that is messenger to May;
And saw well that the shadow of every tree
Was in its length of the same quantity
That was the body e...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court, 
A tributary prince of Devon, one 
Of that great Order of the Table Round, 
Had married Enid, Yniol's only child, 
And loved her, as he loved the light of Heaven. 
And as the light of Heaven varies, now 
At sunrise, now at sunset, now by night 
With moon and trembling stars, so loved Geraint 
To make her beaut...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...I
My hair is gray, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd - forbidden fare;
But this was for my fa...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...(From the early Anglo-Saxon text) 

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were b...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra
...Before those cruel twins whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learn?d rhyme,
A Lady Witch there lived on Atlas mountain
Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

Her mother was ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...1
OF these years I sing, 
How they pass and have pass’d, through convuls’d pains as through parturitions; 
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the
 Absolute
 Success, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; 
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience,
 compulsion,...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew
From nature, I believe 'em true:
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.

This maxim more than all the rest
Is thought too base for human breast:
"In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us."

If t...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry