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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A Ballad of Burial

...that -- your work is done.
 Recollect a Padre must
Mourn the dear departed one --
 Throw the ashes and the dust.
Don't go down at once. I trust
 You will find excuse to "snake
Three days' casual on the bust."
 Get your fun for old sake's sake.

I could never stand the Plains.
 Think of blazing June and May
Think of those September rains
 Yearly till the Judgment Day!
I should never rest in peace,
 I should sweat and lie awake.
Rail me then, on my decease,
 To the Hills for o...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...n ourselves only. 

(O mother! O sisters dear! 
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy’d us; 
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.) 

3
Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme?
There can be any number of Supremes—One does not countervail another, any more than
 one
 eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another. 

All is eligible to all, 
All is for individuals—All is for you, 
No condition is prohibited—not God’s, or any. 

All c...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Avons Harvest

...is nothing lost. 
Science be praised that there is nothing lost.” 

I’m glad the venom that was on his tongue 
May not go down on paper; and I’m glad
No friend of mine alive, far as I know, 
Has a tale waiting for me with an end 
Like Avon’s. There was here an interruption, 
Though not a long one—only while we heard, 
As we had heard before, the ghost of steps
Faintly outside. We knew that she was there 
Again; and though it was a kindly folly, 
I wished that Avon’s wife wou...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

...ankle. My g-string rides between my buttcheeks making
me twitch with pain. My head starts spinning, my knees wobble, I go down
on all fours and puke all over the bald guy's lap.

So there I am. Butt naked on all fours. But before I have time to regain
my composure, the strip club manager comes over, points his smarmy strip
club manager finger at me and goes: 
"You're bald, you're drunk, you can't dance and you're fired."

I stand up.

"Oh yeah, well you stink like a sneaker,...Read more of this...
by Estep, Maggie

Captain Craig

...now the rarest music; 
And water that had called him once to death 
Now seemed a flowing glory. And that man, 
Born to go down a soldier, did this thing.
Not much to do? Not very much, I grant you: 
Good occupation for a sonneteer, 
Or for a clown, or for a clergyman, 
But small work for a soldier. By the way, 
When you are weary sometimes of your own
Utility, I wonder if you find 
Occasional great comfort pondering 
What power a man has in him to put forth? 
‘Of all the man...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington


Diving into the Wreck

...ooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
i...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy

...re this well-stuffed doll, the wire,
the face that is nothing but appearance. Here out front
I wait. Even if the lights go down and I am told:
"There's nothing more to come," -even if
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down
from the deserted stage -even if not one
of my now silent forebears sist beside me
any longer, not a woman, not even a boy-
he with the brown and squinting eyes-:
I'll still remain. For one can always watch.

Am I not right? You, to whom life wo...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria

For every struggle that Joe survived

...For every struggle that Joe survived,
For every dispute he endured, to rise,
Joe will go down in history
as a model for champions to come.
While Frazier was a man of few words,
Ali was a world of mouth,
but he found his place in history.
Now his heart can express him well.
Joe Frazier was a silent warrior,
whom Ali silently admired.
One could not rise without the other....Read more of this...
by Ali, Muhammad

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

...ing stars
Simulates triumphal cars
Deployed in constellated wars
Scorpion fights against the Sun
Until the Sun and Moon go down
Comets weep and Leonids fly
Hunt the heavens and the plains
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

 That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. Th...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Hymn to Demeter by Homer

...and he promised to give her what rights she should choose among the deathless gods and agreed that her daughter should go down for the third part of the circling year to darkness and gloom, but for the two parts should live with her mother and the other deathless gods. Thus he commanded. And the goddess did not disobey the message of Zeus; swiftly she rushed down from the peaks of Olympus and came to the plain of Rharus, rich, fertile corn-land once, but then in nowise fruit...Read more of this...
by Homer,

Last Instructions to a Painter

...re, 
Binding, ere the Houses meet, the treaty sure, 
And 'twixt necessity and spite, till then, 
Let them come up so to go down again. 

Up ambles country justice on his pad, 
And vest bespeaks to be more seemly clad. 
Plain gentlemen in stagecoach are o'erthrown 
And deputy-lieutenants in their own. 
The portly burgess through the weather hot 
Does for his corporation sweat and trot; 
And all with sun and choler come adust 
And threaten Hyde to raise a greater dust. 
But fre...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

Mazeppa

...there from morn till twilight bound,
I felt the heavy hours toll round,
With just enough of life to see
My last of suns go down on me, 
In hopeless certainty of mind,
That makes us feel at length resigned
To that which our foreboding years
Presents the worst and last of fears
Inevitable - even a boon,
Nor more unkind for coming soon,
Yet shunned and dreaded with such care, 
As if it only were a snare
That prudence might escape: 
At times both wished for and implored, 
At time...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

My Native Land

...es, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung. ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

Part 9 of Trout Fishing in America

...utside and the yellow wallpaper in

the hotel room would be running back off the light bulb. I'd

put my clothes on and go down to the restaurant where my

stepfather cooked all night.

 "I'd have breakfast, hot cakes, eggs and whatnot. Then

he'd make my lunch for me and it would always be the same

thing: a piece of pie and a stone-cold pork sandwich. After-

wards I'd walk to school. I mean the three of us, the Holy

Trinity: me, a piece of pie, and a stone-cold pork sandw...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Ravenna

...way,
Clothed in the royal purple of the day:
I from the city of the violet crown
Have watched the sun by Corinth's hill go down,
And marked the 'myriad laughter' of the sea
From starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.

O poet's city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn's livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Sea Dreams

...ender Christian hope
Haunting a holy text, and still to that
Returning, as the bird returns, at night,
`Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,'
Said, `Love, forgive him:' but he did not speak;
And silenced by that silence lay the wife,
Remembering her dear Lord who died for all,
And musing on the little lives of men,
And how they mar this little by their feuds. 

But while the two were sleeping, a full tide
Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks
Touching, upje...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Tasker Norcross

...ve a personality— 
And maybe the same one the Lord left out 
Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it, 
Saw the same sun go down year after year;
All which at last was my discovery. 
And only mine, so far as evidence 
Enlightens one more darkness. You have known 
All round you, all your days, men who are nothing— 
Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet
Of any other need it has of them 
Than to make sextons hardy—but no less 
Are to themselves incalculably something, 
And th...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Ballad of the White Horse

...y slaves found it sweet;
I was a fool and wasted bread,
And the birds had bread to eat.

"The kings go up and the kings go down,
And who knows who shall rule;
Next night a king may starve or sleep,
But men and birds and beasts shall weep
At the burial of a fool.

"O, drunkards in my cellar,
Boys in my apple tree,
The world grows stern and strange and new,
And wise men shall govern you,
And you shall weep for me.

"But yoke me my own oxen,
Down to my own farm;
My own dog will ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

....
I dream of a crowd of faces, white with menace.
Hands reach up to tear me. My brain will fail.

Here, where the walls go down beneath our picks,
These walls whose windows gap against the sky,
Atom by atom of flesh and brain and marble
Will build a glittering tower before we die . . .

The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street,
The young girl hums beneath her breath.
One goes out to beauty, and does not know it.
And one goes out to death.


X. SUDDEN DEATH

'Number fo...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Man Against the Sky

...re all round him, 
Who moved along the molten west,
And over the round hill’s crest 
That seemed half ready with him to go down, 
Flame-bitten and flame-cleft, 
As if there were to be no last thing left 
Of a nameless unimaginable town,— 
Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken 
Down to the perils of a depth not known, 
From death defended though by men forsaken, 
The bread that every man must eat alone; 
He may have walked while others hardly dared 
Look on to see hi...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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