Famous End Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous End poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous end poems. These examples illustrate what a famous end poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Erica Jong
Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like india ink,
& poets dip their pens in
& they write.
"Here, at the end of the world,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestack feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
& people come to resemble them....Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
When the coal
Gave out, we began
Burning the books, one by one;
First the set
Of Bulwer-Lytton
And then the Walter Scott.
They gave a lot of warmth.
Toward the end, in
February, flames
Consumed the Greek
Tragedians and Baudelaire,
Proust, Robert Burton
And the Po-Chu-i. Ice
Thickened on the sills.
More for the sake of the cat,
We said, than for ourselves,
Who huddled, shivering,
Against the stove
All winter long....Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
So take my vows and scatter them to sea;
Who swears the sweetest is no more than human.
And say no kinder words than these of me:
"Ever she longed for peace, but was a woman!
And thus they are, whose silly female dust
Needs little enough to clutter it and bind it,
Who meet a slanted gaze, and ever must
Go build themselves a soul...Read more of this...
by
Kathleen Raine
Now he is dead
How should I know
My true love's arms
From wind and snow?
No man I meet
In field or house
Though in the street
A hundred pass.
The hurrying dust
Has never a face,
No longer human
In man or woman.
Now he is gone
Why should I mourn
My true love more than mud,
than mud or stone?...Read more of this...
by
J R R Tolkien
In western lands beneath the Sun
The flowers may rise in Spring,
The trees may bud, the waters run,
The merry finches sing.
Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,
And swaying branches bear
The Elven-stars as jewels white
Amid their branching hair.
Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Life, you've been mighty good to me,
Yet here's the end of the trail;
No more mountain, moor and sea,
No more saddle and sail.
Waves a-leap in the laughing sun
Call to me as of yore. . . .
Alas! my errant days are done:
I'll rove no more, no more.
Life, you've cheered me all the way;
You've been my bosom friend;
But gayest dog will have...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
And how can I, born in evil days
And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate?
-- Written A.D. 819
Po Chu-i, balding old politician,
What's the use?
I think of you,
Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,
When you were being towed up the rapids
Toward some political job or other
In the city of Chungshou.
You made it, I guess,
By dark.
But it is 1960,...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth
And wash with an immortal water age?
When...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
Our toil is He, & eke our journey’s end;
Our life-long ailment & our remedy,
Our foeman & our ever-pitying friend;
Who is more vanquishing than victory,
Fairer than beauty, more belov’d than life;
This is he who our peace is & our strife.
Our strenuous earth is He & eke our Heaven,
The crown of conquest & the armour riven,
The strength, the struggle, yea, the failing...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Throughout the echoing chambers of my brain
I hear your words in mournful cadence toll
Like some slow passing-bell which warns the soul
Of sundering darkness. Unrelenting, fain
To batter down resistance, fall again
Stroke after stroke, insistent diastole,
The bitter blows of truth, until the whole
Is hammered into fact made strangely plain.
Where shall I look for comfort? Not to you.
Our worlds are drawn apart,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, yes, the chapter ends to-day;
We even lay the book away;
But oh, how sweet the moments sped
Before the final page was read!
We tried to read between the lines
The Author's deep-concealed designs;
But scant reward such search secures;
You saw my heart and I saw yours.
The Master,—He who penned the page
And bade us read it,—He is sage:
And what he orders, you and I
Can...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
There was an unwanted child.
Aborted by three modern methods
she hung on to the womb,
hooked onto I
building her house into it
and it was to no avail,
to black her out.
At her birth
she did not cry,
spanked indeed,
but did not yell--
instead snow fell out of her mouth.
As she grew, year by year,
her hair turned like a rose in a vase,
and bled down her...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
How like her! But 'tis she herself,
Comes up the crowded street,
How little did I think, the morn,
My only love to meet!
Whose else that motion and that mien?
Whose else that airy tread?
For one strange moment I forgot
My only love was dead....Read more of this...
by
George Bradley
the people are very small and shrink,
dwarves on the way to netsuke hell
bound for a flea circus in full
retreat toward sub-atomic particles--
difficult to keep in focus, the figures
at that end are nearly indistinguishable,
generals at the heads of minute armies
differing little from fishwives,
emperors the same as eskimos
huddled under improvisations of snow--
eskimos, though, now have the advantage,
for it seems...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
SO far, and so far, and on toward the end,
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me;
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity,
Whether I shall dart forth the true rays, the ones that wait unfired,
(Did you think the sun was shining its brightest?
No—it has not yet fully risen;)...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,
God send it soon. When I had most to say
my tongue clung to the roof
I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured, and has been. God send
it soon.
I now must speak to my disciples, west
and east. I say to you, Do not delay
I say, expectation...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
He tries to find the exit
From himself
But there is no door.
He walks
Through the inner labyrinth
To deceive his desire.
Perhaps there is an entrance
At the end of the labyrinth
But there is no end.
...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,
I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I
When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?
Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
(Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright
Twice in my quickly disappearing forties
someone called while someone I loved and I were
making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer.
Seven years apart, and two different lovers:
underneath the numbers, how lives are braided,
how those women's death and lives, lived and died, were
interleaved also.
Does lip touch on lip a memento mori?
Does the...Read more of this...
by
Katharine Tynan
The night darkens fast & the shadows darken,
Clouds & the rain gather about mine house,
Only the wood-dove moans, hearken, O hearken!
The moan of the wood-dove in the rain-wet boughs.
Loneliness & the night! The night is lonely
Star-covered the night takes to a tender breast
Wrapping them in her veil these dark hours only
The weary, the bereaved, the dispossessed.
When will...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
This pleasant tale is like a little copse:
The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white Simplicity!
What mighty power...Read more of this...
by
Anthony Hecht
A dying firelight slides along the quirt
Of the cast iron cowboy where he leans
Against my father's books. The lariat
Whirls into darkness. My girl in skin tight jeans
Fingers a page of Captain Marriat
Inviting insolent shadows to her shirt.
We rise together to the second floor.
Outside, across the lake, an endless wind
Whips against the headstones of the dead and wails
In the trees...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
To B. T.
Dead-tired, dog-tired, as the vivid day
Fails and slackens and fades away.--
The sky that was so blue before
With sudden clouds is shrouded o'er.
Swiftly, stilly the mists uprise,
Till blurred and grey the landscape lies.
* * * * * * *
All day we have plied the oar; all day
Eager and keen have said our say
On life and death, on love...Read more of this...
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