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Famous Give Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...
But here and hence your victory. 

Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers!
Resolve ye back again—give up, for good, your deadly arms; 
Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or East or West, 
With saner wars—sweet wars—life-giving wars. 

10
Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul! 
The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding;
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. 

All till’d and untill’d fields expand bef...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain 
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants 
red brick houses where I shall give up booze 
and organized religion even if it means 
despair is a logical possibility that can't 
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five 
senses and what they half perceive and half 
create, the green street signs with white 
letters on them the body next to mine 
asleep while I think these thoughts 
that I want to eliminate like nostalgia
0 was the...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David
...ister. 
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical 
 joke? 
I'm trying to come to the point. 
I refuse to give up my obsession. 
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. 
America the plum blossoms are falling. 
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday 
 somebody goes on trial for murder. 
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. 
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid 
 I'm not sorry. 
I smoke marijuana every chance I get. 
I sit in...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...ke quick
 preparation! 
O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle! 
(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your spoils;)
O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world should prove indeed a sham, a sell!) 
O I believe there is nothing real but America and freedom! 
O to sternly reject all except Democracy! 
O imperator! O who dare confront you and me? 
O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which builds for mankind!
O feuillage! O North! O the slop...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...mean to prove it in due time. 
Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie 
I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall, 
So give up hope accordingly to solve-- 


(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then 
With both of us, though in unlike degree, 
Missing full credence--overboard with them! 
I mean to meet you on your own premise: 
Good, there go mine in company with yours! 

And now what are we? unbelievers both, 
Calm and complete, determinately fixed 
To-day, to-morrow and...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...cruel mocks, 
Annihilate thee on the rocks, 
And another form create 
To be subservient to my fate. 

‘Let us agree to give up love, 
And root up the Infernal Grove; 
Then shall we return and see 
The worlds of happy Eternity. 

‘And throughout all Eternity 
I forgive you, you forgive me. 
As our dear Redeemer said: 
“This the Wine, and this the Bread.”’...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...times
slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.
Of course it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer
to give up customs one barely had time to learn
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave
even one's own first name behind forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung ...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...groveling, serpenting,
Shewing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting!
O such deformities! Old Charon's self,
Should he give up awhile his penny pelf,
And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian,
It could not be so phantasied. Fierce, wan,
And tyrannizing was the lady's look,
As over them a gnarled staff she shook.
Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out,
And from a basket emptied to the rout
Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick
And roar'd for more; with many a hungry...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
....
"The tip's a good one, as for literature
"It gives no man a sinecure."

And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.
And give up verse, my boy,
There's nothing in it."

* * * 

Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:
Don't kick against the pricks,
Accept opinion. The "Nineties" tried your game
And died, there's nothing in it.

X. 

Beneath the sagging roof
The stylist has taken shelter,
Unpaid, uncelebrated,
At last from the world's welter

Nature receives him,
With ...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra
...hes and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but agaist you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present te...Read more of this...
by Atwood, Margaret
...she lived, would be
As far again as from being born to bearing."

 "Just one look more with what you say in mind,
And I give up"; which last look came to nothing.
But though they now gave up the search forever,
They clung to what one had seen in the other
By inspiration. It proved there was something.
They kept their thoughts away from when the maples
Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam
Of sap and snow rolled off the sugarhouse.
When they made her related to the maples,
I...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...

he even has x-wives in some of his
houses.

his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from
you. he doesn't want to give up a
damn thing. and you can't blame him:
his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept,
talented, well-dressed, schooled, with
varying French-German accents.

and!: they
WRITE POETRY TOO. or
PAINT. or
****.

but his big problem is to get down to that mail
box in town to get back his
rejected poems
and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes
in all his ot...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My mother, she told me no end,
‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’
I was youn...Read more of this...
by Ayres, Pam
...years be-

coming a doctor. His studies had been interrupted by the

Depression and two wars. He told me that he would give up

the practice of medicine if it became socialized in America.

 "I've never turned away a patient in my life, and I've

never known another doctor who has. Last year I wrote off

six thousand dollars worth of bad debts, " he said.

 I was going to say that a sick person should never under

any conditions be abad debt, but I decided to forget it. Noth...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...
What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? 
What cheerful willingness, for others’ sake, to give up all? 
For others’ sake to suffer all? 

Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d,
(The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,) 
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d, 
As, fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, 
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. 

12
Passage to mor...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ou're all guilty alike?
Either like them for what you've made them
or make of them what you can like.

    If you'd give up pursuing them,
you'd discover, without a doubt,
you've a stronger case to make
against those who seek you out.

    I well know what powerful arms
you wield in pressing for evil:
your arrogance is allied
with the world, the flesh, and the devil!...Read more of this...
by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...e been a captain of a host, 
Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies, 
Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees,
And then give up the ghost. 
Nahum’s great grasshoppers were such as these, 
Sun-scattered and soon lost. 

Whatever the dark road he may have taken, 
This man who stood on high
And faced alone the sky, 
Whatever drove or lured or guided him,— 
A vision answering a faith unshaken, 
An easy trust assumed of easy trials, 
A sick negation born of weak denials,
A crazed ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ble states.
It was as if he were drawn
irresistably to failure."
It was hard to keep reading.
I was tired and wanted to give up.
The book seemed aware of this.
It hinted at changing the subject.
I waited for you to wake not knowing
how long I waited,
and it seemed that I was no longer reading.
I heard the wind passing
like a stream of sighs
and I heard the shiver of leaves
in the trees outside the window.
It would be in the book.
Everything would be there.
I looked at your fa...Read more of this...
by Strand, Mark
...nd pain magnified
the greatest pain discovered
u taught me 2 be strong
but im confused 2 c u so weak
u said never 2 give up
and it hurts 2 c u welcome defeat

when ure hero falls so do the stars
and so does the perception of tomorrow
without my hero there is only
me alone 2 deal with my sorrow
your heart ceases 2 work
and your soul is not happy at all
what r u expected 2 do
when ure only hero falls...Read more of this...
by Shakur, Tupac
...lf a candidate for my affections? 

The way is suspicious—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive; 
You would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to be your God, sole and
 exclusive, 
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, 
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have
 to
 be
 abandon’d;
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further—Let go your hand from my
 shoulders, 
Put me down, an...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things