Get Your Premium Membership

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).

See also:

by Crowley, Aleister
...and second, linked eternally
In chains of flowers that never fading are,
Each one as sempiternal as a star.

Let me go back to your last birthday. Then
I was already your one man of men
Appointed to complete you, and fulfil
From everlasting the eternal will.
We lay within the flood of crimson light
In my own balcony that August night,
And conjuring the aright and the averse
Created yet another universe.

We worked together; dance and rite and spell
Arousing he...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...han man,’
Said Sophocles; and he lived long ago; 
‘And earth, unending ancient of the gods 
He furrows; and the ploughs go back and forth, 
Turning the broken mould, year after year.’… 

“I turned a little furrow of my own
Once on a time, and everybody laughed— 
As I laughed afterwards; and I doubt not 
The First Intelligence, which we have drawn 
In our competitive humility 
As if it went forever on two legs,
Had some diversion of it: I believe 
God’s humor is the music ...Read more of this...

by Silverstein, Shel
...d every time he lost a shoe,
Everyone looked awfully blue.
And every time he stood on his head,
Everyone screamed, "Go back to bed!"
And every time he made a leap,
Everybody fell asleep.
And every time he ate his tie,
Everyone began to cry.
And Cloony could not make any money
Simply because he was not funny.
One day he said, "I'll tell this town
How it feels to be an unfunny clown."
And he told them all why he looked so sad,
And he told them all why he fel...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don't want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of 
happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. "Up
The lazy river, how happy we coul...Read more of this...

by Ammons, A R
...ill not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how he’s shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who
were the rumored fathers of cousins
who whispered of them as of great,...Read more of this...



by Kizer, Carolyn
...cross a continent.

Old Zeus refused to take the rap.
It's not his name in big print on the map.

But let's go back to the beginning
when sinners didn't know that they were sinning.

He, one rib short: she lived to rue it
when Adam said to God, "She made me do it."

Eve learned that learning was a dangerous thing
for her: no end of trouble would it bring.

An educated woman is a danger.
Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger

like Darby's Jo...Read more of this...

by Homer,
...father, the dark-clouded Son of Cronos and be honoured by all the deathless gods; but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year: yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods. But when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind, then from the realm of darkness and gloom thou shalt come up once more to be a wonder for go...Read more of this...

by Borges, Jorge Luis
...who live
 prudent and prolific lives -
 each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,
 if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,

If you don't know - thats what life is made of,
Don't lose the now!

I was one of those who never goes anywhere
 without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
 and without an umberella and without a parachute,

If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet
 at...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...r; and don’t begin your stories always in the middle. 
Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you’ve gone too far 
To go back, and I’m your servant. I’m the lord, but you’re the master.
Now go on with what you know, for I’m excited.” 

“Do you mean— 
Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?” 

“I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. 
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven
Were to swing or to stay bol...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...sement, and we sleep outside under the

 apple tree, waking at dawn to stare out across San Francisco

 Bay and then we go back to sleep again and wake once more,

 this time for a very strange thing to happen, and then we go

 back to sleep again after it has happened, and wake at sunrise

 to stare out across the bay.

 Afterwards we go back to sleep again and the sun rises

 steadily hour after hour, staying in the branches of a eucalyp-

 tus tree just a ways down the...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...he joy of increase, growth, recuperation; 
The joy of soothing and pacifying—the joy of concord and harmony. 

O to go back to the place where I was born! 
To hear the birds sing once more!
To ramble about the house and barn, and over the fields, once more, 
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more. 

5
O male and female! 
O the presence of women! (I swear there is nothing more exquisite to me than the mere
 presence
 of women;) 
O for the girl, my ma...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ying to the people, Do not weep for
 me, 
This is not my true country, I have lived banish’d from my true country—I now go back
 there,
I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes in his turn. 

7
I see the battle-fields of the earth—grass grows upon them, and blossoms and corn; 
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions. 

I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of
 the
 earth. 

I see the places...Read more of this...

by Clifton, Lucille
...time
and mama laugh and shake her head at
me and you.

me and you
got babies
got thirty-five
got black
let our hair go back
be loving ourselves
be loving ourselves
be sisters.

only where you sing,
I poet.

Credit: Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...> Cole’s voice came from an inner room:
“Did she call you or you call her?”

“She me.
You’d better dress: you won’t go back to bed.
We must have been asleep: it’s three and after.”

“Had she been ringing long? I’ll get my wrapper.
I want to speak to her.”

“All she said was,
He hadn’t come and had he really started.”

“She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago.”

“He had the shovel. He’ll have made a fight.”

“Why did I ever let him leave ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...f to you also—I guess what you mean; 
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers; 
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me; 
We must have a turn together—I undress—hurry me out of sight of the
 land;
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse; 
Dash me with amorous wet—I can repay you. 

Sea of stretch’d ground-swells! 
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths! 
Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell’d yet always-ready graves!
How...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...ve."

____
Baltimore, 1878-9.



IV. Tyranny.


"Spring-germs, spring-germs,
I charge you by your life, go back to death.
This glebe is sick, this wind is foul of breath.
Stay: feed the worms.

"Oh! every clod
Is faint, and falters from the war of growth
And crumbles in a dreary dust of sloth,
Unploughed, untrod.

"What need, what need,
To hide with flowers the curse upon the hills,
Or sanctify the banks of sluggish rills
Where vapors breed?

"...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
....--
Another, of more haughty port, declines
The aid he needs not; while in mute despair
His high indignant thoughts go back to France,
Dwelling on all he lost--the Gothic dome,
That vied with splendid palaces 3 ; the beds
Of silk and down, the silver chalices,
Vestments with gold enwrought for blazing altars;
Where, amid clouds of incense, he held forth
To kneeling crowds the imaginary bones
Of Saints suppos'd, in pearl and gold enchas'd,
And still with more than living M...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...ke
Thy trumpet too, and make
A rallying music in the void night's ear,
Till the storm lose its track,
And all the night go back;
Till, as through sleep false life knows true life near,
Thou know the morning through the night,
And through the thunder silence, and through darkness light."



I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The height of night is shaken, the skies break,
The winds and stars and waters come and go
By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake
As...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...ranging, 
The sounds that say the wind is changing. 
At last he turns and shakes his head, 
"It's nothing. I'll go back to bed."

And just then Mrs. Jaggard came 
To view and end her Jimmy's shame. 

She made on rush and gi'm a bat 
And shook him like a dog a rat. 
"I can't turn round but what you're straying. 
I'll give you tales and gipsy playing. 
I'll give you wand'ring off like this 
And listening to whatever 'tis, 
You'll laugh the little...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...terror of countless

Nights and days until I understood the meaning of our parted ways.







V

If only we could go back to the cottage on the hill at Honley

Where the road sweeps gently under the bridge where trains never ran

Our voices still echoing round the cavernous walls the smooth moss clings to

And we are beyond the reach of the driving rain.



There is always the odd cottage no one can be bothered with where the lorries roar

But when you look behind a...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Go Back poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things