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Famous Give Back Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Give 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 give back poems. These examples illustrate what a famous give back poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Walcott, Derek
...The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?...Read more of this...



by Creeley, Robert
...America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.

Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back

what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be....Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent,
With ropes of rock and bells of air
Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent,
Who all give back, one after t' other,
The death-note to their living brother;
And oft too, by the knell offended,
Just as their one! two! three! is ended,
The devil mocks the doleful tale
With a merry peal from Borrowdale.

The air is still! through mist and cloud
That merry peal comes ringing loud;
And Geraldine shakes off her dread,
And rises lightl...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...are whisked by winds, 
 Of all souvenirs is the place bereft. 
 Do we live no more—is our hour then gone? 
 Will it give back naught to our hungry cry? 
 The breeze answers my call with a mocking tone, 
 The house that was mine makes no reply. 
 
 True! others shall pass, as we have passed, 
 As we have come, so others shall meet, 
 And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste, 
 Shall others continue, but never complete. 
 For none upon earth can achieve his...Read more of this...

by Wei, Wang
...I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers! 
I bow to you all and take my departure. 

Here I give back the keys of my door 
---and I give up all claims to my house. 
I only ask for last kind words from you. 

We were neighbors for long, 
but I received more than I could give. 
Now the day has dawned 
and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. 
A summons has come and I am ready for my journey....Read more of this...



by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
... would restore to the larger the wit and willthe smaller possesses but can only usefor arid disputes, would give back tothe son the mother's richness of feeling: but he would have us remember most of allto be enthusiastic over the night,not only for the sense of wonderit alone has to offer, but also because it needs our love. With large sad eyesits delectable creatures look up and begus dumbly to ask them to follow:they are ...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life....Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...Maid of Athens, ere we part, 
Give, oh, give back my heart! 
Or, since that has left my breast, 
Keep it now, and take the rest! 
Hear my vow before I go, 
Zo? mou sas agapo. 

By those tresses unconfined, 
Wooed by each Aegean wind; 
By those lids whose jetty fringe 
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge; 
By those wild eyes like the roe, 
Zo? mou sas agapo. 

By that lip I long to taste; ...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...ts breathing myriads o'er and o'er,--
One glimpse of day, then black annhilation,
A sunlit passage to a sunless shore?

Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes!
Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds!
Happier was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes,
The stony convent with its cross and beads!

How often gazing where a bird reposes,
Rocked on the wavelets, drifting with the tide,
I lose myself in strange metempsychosis
And float a sea-fowl at a sea-fowl's side;

From ...Read more of this...

by Carew, Thomas
...l the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows 
Into the angry main, to save from wrack 
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back 
These letters : yet so powerful is your sway 
As if you bid me die, I must obey. 
Go then, blest papers, you shall kiss those hands 
That gave you freedom, but hold me in bands ; 
Which with a touch did give you life, but I, 
Because I may not touch those hands, must die. 
Methinks, as if they knew they should be sent 
Home to their native...Read more of this...

by Rosenberg, Isaac
...lood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.

O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom....Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...night,
Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,
Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light,
Returning, shall give back the golden hours,
Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn
Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places,
And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers,
The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces
O heart, in the great dawn!...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...bed. 
She took you the way a women takes 
a bargain dress off the rack 
and I broke the way a stone breaks. 
I give back your books and fishing tack. 
Today's paper says that you are wed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
The boys and girls are one tonight. 
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. 
They take off shoes. They turn off the light. 
The glimmering creatures are full of lies. 
They are eating each other. They are ...Read more of this...

by Popa, Vasko
...nti-stars
And everything else that rots inside her

We won't make her suffer
We'll simply put her together again

We'll give back to the little box
Her pure inconspicuousness...Read more of this...

by Markham, Edwin
...rous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 
How will you ever straighten up this shape; 
Touch it again with immortality; 
Give back the upward looking and the light; 
Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 
Make right the immemorial infamies, 
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 
How will the Future reckon with this Man? 
How answer his brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? 
How will it be with ki...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...and coming there, 
Crave pardon for that insult done the Queen, 
And shalt abide her judgment on it; next, 
Thou shalt give back their earldom to thy kin. 
These two things shalt thou do, or thou shalt die.' 
And Edyrn answered, 'These things will I do, 
For I have never yet been overthrown, 
And thou hast overthrown me, and my pride 
Is broken down, for Enid sees my fall!' 
And rising up, he rode to Arthur's court, 
And there the Queen forgave him easily. 
And b...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...OH for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy,
Than reign, a gray-beard king.

Off with the spoils of wrinkled age!
Away with Learning's crown!
Tear out life's Wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fa...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...COND VOICE:
I am not ugly. I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that. I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic. Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, tw...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...your girdle fixed
Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear
A band entwining, set with fatal stones.
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned and crave....Read more of this...

by Untermeyer, Louis
...What presses about us here in the evening
As you open a window and stare at a stone-gray sky,
And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement
That is tired of life and almost too tired to die.
Night comes on, and even the night is wounded;
There, on its breast, it carries a curved, white scar.
What will you find out there that is not torn and anguished?
Can God be less distressed than the least of His creatures are?
Below are the blatant lights in...Read more of this...

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