Famous Go Down Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sentimental Shark

by Robert William Service
 Give me a cabin in the woods
Where not a human soul intrudes;
Where I can sit beside a stream
Beneath a balsam bough and deam,
And every morning see arise
The sun like bird of paradise;
Then go down to the creek and fish
A speckled trout for breakfast dish,
And fry it in an ember fire -
Ah! there's the life of my desire.

Alas! I'm tied...Read more of this...

Presentiment -- is that long Shadow -- on the Lawn --

by Emily Dickinson
 Presentiment -- is that long Shadow -- on the Lawn --
Indicatives that Suns go down --

The Notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness -- is about to pass --...Read more of this...

At the Zoo

by Alan Alexander (A A) Milne
There are lions and roaring tigers,
and enormous camels and things,
There are biffalo-buffalo-bisons,
and a great big bear with wings.
There's a sort of a tiny potamus,
and a tiny nosserus too -
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!

There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers,
and a Super-in-tendent's House,
There are masses of goats, and a Polar,
and different kinds of...Read more of this...

A Leave-Taking

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. 
Let us go hence together without fear; 
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over, 
And over all old things and all things dear. 
She loves not you nor me as all we love her. 
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, 
 She would not hear. 

Let...Read more of this...

In Hardwood Groves

by Robert Frost
 The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet...Read more of this...

Go Down Death

by James Weldon Johnson
 Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband--weep no more;
Grief-stricken son--weep no more;
Left-lonesome daughter --weep no more;
She only just gone home.

Day before yesterday morning,
God was looking down from his great, high heaven,
Looking down on all his children,
And his eye fell of Sister Caroline,
Tossing on her bed of pain.
And God's big heart was touched...Read more of this...

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

by Maggie Estep
 I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first,
I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and...Read more of this...

A St. Helena Lullaby

by Rudyard Kipling
 "A Priest in Spite of Himself"
"How far is St. Helena from a little child at play!"
What makes you want to wander there with all the world
 between.
Oh, Mother, call your son again or else he'll run away.
(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)

"How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street?"
I haven't time to...Read more of this...

Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Vicisti, Galilæe
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of...Read more of this...

Little Sleeps-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

by Galway Kinnell
1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go...Read more of this...

Gloucester Moods

by William Vaughn Moody
 A mile behind is Gloucester town 
Where the flishing fleets put in, 
A mile ahead the land dips down 
And the woods and farms begin. 
Here, where the moors stretch free 
In the high blue afternoon, 
Are the marching sun and talking sea, 
And the racing winds that wheel and flee 
On the flying heels of June. 

Jill-o'er-the-ground is...Read more of this...

Nocturne of the Wharves

by Arna Bontemps
 All night they whine upon their ropes and boom
against the dock with helpless prows:
these little ships that are too worn for sailing
front the wharf but do not rest at all.
Tugging at the dim gray wharf they think
no doubt of China and of bright Bombay,
and they remember islands of the East,
Formosa and the mountains of Japan.
They think of cities ruined...Read more of this...

The Ships that Wont Go Down

by Henry Lawson
 We hear a great commotion 
'Bout the ship that comes to grief, 
That founders in mid-ocean, 
Or is driven on a reef; 
Because it's cheap and brittle 
A score of sinners drown. 
But we hear but mighty little 
Of the ships that won't go down. 

Here's honour to the builders – 
The builders of the past; 
Here's honour to...Read more of this...

Wind at Tindari

by Salvatore Quasimodo
 Tindari, I know you
mild between broad hills, overhanging the waters
of the god’s sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.

I climb airy peaks, precipices,
following the wind in the pines,
and the crowd of them, lightly accompanying me,
fly off into the air,
wave of love and sound,
and you take me to you,
you from whom I wrongly drew
evil, and fear of silence,...Read more of this...

Conqueror

by Robert William Service
 Though I defy the howling horde
As bloody-browed I smite,
Back to the wall with shattered sword
When darkly dooms the night;
Though hoarse they cheer as I go down
Before their bitter odds,
'Tis I who win the victor's crown,
The guerdon of the gods. 

For all who fall in fearless fight
Alight a deathless flame,
That glorifies the godless night
And fills the foe with shame.
'Tis they...Read more of this...

Cornish Lullaby

by Eugene Field
 Out on the mountain over the town,
All night long, all night long,
The trolls go up and the trolls go down,
Bearing their packs and crooning a song;
And this is the song the hill-folk croon,
As they trudge in the light of the misty moon,--
This is ever their dolorous tune:
"Gold, gold! ever more gold,--
Bright red gold for dearie!"

Deep in the hill the...Read more of this...

En-Dor

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor." I Samuel, xxviii. 7.
 The road to En-dor is easy to tread
 For Mother or yearning Wife.
 There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead
 As they were even in life.
 Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
 For desolate hearts on the road...Read more of this...

Meeting

by Peter Huchel
 For Michael Hamburger

Barn owl
daughter of snow,
subject to the night wind,

yet taking root
with her talons
in the rotten scab of walls,

beak face
with round eyes,
heart-rigid mask
of feathers a white fire
that touches neither time nor space.

Coldly the wind blows
against the old homestead,
in the yard pale folk,
sledges, baggage, lamps covered with snow,

in the pots death,
in the pitchers poison,
the last will nailed to a post.

The...Read more of this...

Length of Moon

by Arna Bontemps
 Then the golden hour 
Will tick its last 
And the flame will go down in the flower.
A briefer length of moon 
Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.
Then we may think of this, yet 
There will be something forgotten
And something we should forget.
It will be like all things we know: .
A stone will fail; a rose is sure...Read more of this...

The Constellations

by William Cullen Bryant
 O constellations of the early night, 
That sparkled brighter as the twilight died, 
And made the darkness glorious! I have seen 
Your rays grow dim upon the horizon's edge, 
And sink behind the mountains. I have seen 
The great Orion, with his jewelled belt, 
That large-limbed warrior of the skies, go down 
Into the gloom. Beside him sank a...Read more of this...

When The Sun Come After Rain

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 WHEN the sun comes after rain
And the bird is in the blue,
The girls go down the lane
Two by two.

When the sun comes after shadow
And the singing of the showers,
The girls go up the meadow,
Fair as flowers.

When the eve comes dusky red
And the moon succeeds the sun,
The girls go home to bed
One by one.

And when life draws to its even
And...Read more of this...

Wine and Water

by G K Chesterton
 Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale, 
He ate his egg with a ladle in a egg-cup big as a pail, 
And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and fish he took was Whale, 
But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail, 
And Noah...Read more of this...

Growin' Gray

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Hello, ole man, you 're a-gittin' gray,
An' it beats ole Ned to see the way
'At the crow's feet's a-getherin' aroun' yore eyes;
Tho' it ought n't to cause me no su'prise,
Fur there 's many a sun 'at you 've seen rise
An' many a one you 've seen go down
Sence yore step was light an' yore hair was brown,
An' storms an' snows...Read more of this...

Gone

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 IN Collins Street standeth a statute tall, 
A statue tall, on a pillar of stone, 
Telling its story, to great and small, 
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone; 
Weary and wasted, and worn and wan, 
Feeble and faint, and languid and low, 
He lay on the desert a dying man; 
Who has gone, my friends, where...Read more of this...

Frist Poem

by Peter Orlovsky
 A rainbow comes pouring into my window, I am electrified. 
Songs burst from my breast, all my crying stops, mistory fills 
 the air. 
I look for my shues under my bed. 
A fat colored woman becomes my mother. 
I have no false teeth yet. Suddenly ten children sit on my lap. 
I grow a beard in one day....Read more of this...

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