Famous Go Back Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Revealer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 (ROOSEVELT)

He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion … And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.


The palms of Mammon have disowned 
The gift of our complacency;...Read more of this...

Pictures of Home

by Julie Hill Alger
  In the red-roofed stucco house
of my childhood, the dining room 
was screened off by folding doors 
with small glass panes. Our neighbors
the Bertins, who barely escaped Hitler, 
often joined us at table. One night 
their daughter said, In Vienna 
our dining room had doors like these.
For a moment, we all sat quite still. 

And when Nath Nong, who...Read more of this...

The Nostomaniac

by Robert William Service
 On the ragged edge of the world I'll roam,
And the home of the wolf shall be my home,
And a bunch of bones on the boundless snows
The end of my trail . . . who knows, who knows!

I'm dreaming to-night in the fire-glow, alone in my study tower,
My books battalioned around me, my Kipling flat on my knee;
But I'm not...Read more of this...

Embrace Noir

by Nick Flynn
 I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.

They jerk around the apartment like that
holding on to each other, their cheeks

almost touching. One is shirtless, the other
wears a suit, the one in the suit came in through a window

to steal documents or diamonds, it doesn't matter anymore 
which, what's...Read more of this...

There was an old person of Dundalk

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of Dundalk,Who tried to teach fishes to walk;When they tumbled down dead, he grew weary, and said,"I had better go back to Dundalk!" ...Read more of this...

The Revelation

by Robert William Service
 The same old sprint in the morning, boys, to the same old din and smut;
Chained all day to the same old desk, down in the same old rut;
Posting the same old greasy books, catching the same old train:
Oh, how will I manage to stick it all, if I ever get back again?

We've bidden good-bye to life in a cage,...Read more of this...

Last Answers

by Carl Sandburg
 I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
 how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
 into points of mystery quivering with color.

 I answered:
The whole world was mist once...Read more of this...

In Umbria

by Jack Gilbert
 Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe
watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came
out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted.
She did not know what to do. Already bewildered
by being thirteen and just that summer a woman,
she now had to walk past the American.
But she did fine. Went by and around the corner
with style,...Read more of this...

that precise moment

by Rg Gregory
 however foul the times or difficult the ways are
through those personal morasses this change of age
won’t let a single being (rich or poor) be free from
come spring the trees get on with their blossoming
you’d think they didn’t read the newspapers

you’d think the media hadn’t yet found a way
of getting to them conveying the miserable truths
this creaking into a new...Read more of this...

There was an old person of Bow

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of Bow,Whom nobody happened to know;So they gave him some soap, and said coldly, "We hopeYou will go back directly to Bow!" ...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

Our Singing Strength

by Robert Frost
 It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes...Read more of this...

The Fear

by Robert Frost
 A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
A horse's hoof pawed once the hollow floor,
And the back of the gig they stood beside
Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel,
The woman spoke out sharply, "Whoa, stand...Read more of this...

I Made A Mistake

by Charles Bukowski
 I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked "are these yours?" 
and she looked and said,
"no, those belong to a dog." 
she left after that and I haven't seen
her since. she's not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back...Read more of this...

On Looking for Models

by Alan Dugan
 The trees in time
have something else to do
besides their treeing. What is it.
I'm a starving to death
man myself, and thirsty, thirsty
by their fountains but I cannot drink
their mud and sunlight to be whole.
I do not understand these presences
that drink for months
in the dirt, eat light,
and then fast dry in the cold.
They stand it out somehow,
and how, the Botanists will...Read more of this...

The Beauty of Death XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and 
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights; 
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and 
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body; 
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with...Read more of this...

The Sea-Child

by Katherine Mansfield
 Into the world you sent her, mother,
Fashioned her body of coral and foam,
Combed a wave in her hair's warm smother,
And drove her away from home

In the dark of the night she crept to the town
And under a doorway she laid her down,
The little blue child in the foam-fringed gown.

And never a sister and never a brother
To hear her call,...Read more of this...

The Knight in Disguise

by Vachel Lindsay
 [Concerning O. Henry (Sidney Porter)]

"He could not forget that he was a Sidney."


Is this Sir Philip Sidney, this loud clown, 
The darling of the glad and gaping town? 

This is that dubious hero of the press 
Whose slangy tongue and insolent address 
Were spiced to rouse on Sunday afternoon 
The man with yellow journals round him strewn. 
We laughed...Read more of this...

I Go Back To The House For A Book

by Billy Collins
 I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost...Read more of this...

Little Mack

by Eugene Field
 This talk about the journalists that run the East is bosh,
We've got a Western editor that's little, but, O gosh!
He lives here in Mizzoora where the people are so set
In ante-bellum notions that they vote for Jackson yet;
But the paper he is running makes the rusty fossils swear,--
The smartest, likeliest paper that is printed anywhere!
And, best of all, the...Read more of this...

Psalm 80

by John Milton
 Thou Shepherd that dost Israel keep
Give ear in time of need,
Who leadest like a flock of sheep
Thy loved Josephs seed,
That sitt'st between the Cherubs bright
Between their wings out-spread
Shine forth, and from thy cloud give light,
And on our foes thy dread.
In Ephraims view and Benjamins,
And in Manasse's sight 
Awake* thy strength, come, and be seen *Gnorera.
To save us by thy...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...

Little Brown Baby

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, 
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh -- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib -- you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf -- dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
Bein' so sticky an...Read more of this...

Taedium Vitae

by Oscar Wilde
 To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, - I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath...Read more of this...

The Boy And the Angel

by Robert Browning
 Morning, evening, noon and night,
``Praise God!; sang Theocrite.

Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.

Hard he laboured, long and well;
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.

But ever, at each period,
He stopped and sang, ``Praise God!''

Then back again his curls he threw,
And cheerful turned to work anew.

Said Blaise, the listening monk, ``Well done;
``I doubt not thou...Read more of this...

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