Famous Going Away Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Going Away poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous going away poems. These examples illustrate what a famous going away poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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A Boy ScoutsPatrol Song

by Rudyard Kipling
  1913
These are our regulations-- 
 There's just one law for the Scout 
And the first and the last, and the present and the past,
 And the future and the perfect is "Look out!"
 I, thou and he, look out!
 We, ye and they, look out!
 Though you didn't or you wouldn't
 Or you hadn't or you couldn't;
 You...Read more of this...

Departure

by Henry Van Dyke
 Oh, why are you shining so bright, big Sun, 
And why is the garden so gay?
Do you know that my days of delight are done,
Do you know I am going away?
If you covered your face with a cloud, I 'd dream
You were sorry for me in my pain,
And the heads of the flowers all bowed would seem
To be weeping...Read more of this...

Dream Song 25: Henry edged decidedly made up stories

by John Berryman
 Henry, edged, decidedly, made up stories
lighting the past of Henry, of his glorious
present, and his hoaries,
all the bight heals he tamped-” -”Euphoria,
Mr Bones, euphoria. Fate clobber all.
-”Hand me back my crawl,

condign Heaven. Tighten into a ball
elongate & valved Henry. Tuck him peace.
Render him sightless,
or ruin at high rate his crampon focus,
wipe out his need. Reduce him to the rest...Read more of this...

Before you are made drunk by the cup of death, before

by Omar Khayyam
Before you are made drunk by the cup of death, before
the revolutions of time are full behind you, endeavor
to make a foundation here below, for you will profit
nothing by going away empty-handed....Read more of this...

A Waltz-Quadrille

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 The band was playing a waltz-quadrille,
I felt as light as a wind-blown feather,
As we floated away, at the caller’s will,
Through the intricate, mazy dance together.
Like mimic armies our lines were meeting,
Slowly advancing, and then retreating,
All decked in their bright array;
And back and forth to the music’s rhyme
We moved together, and all the time
I knew you were going away.

The fold...Read more of this...

Anashuya And Vijaya

by William Butler Yeats
 A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden;
around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneeling
within the temple.

Anashuya. Send peace on all the lands and flickering
corn. -
O, may tranquillity walk by his elbow
When wandering in the forest, if he love
No other. - Hear, and may the indolent flocks
Be plentiful. - And if he love another,
May...Read more of this...

Johanna Sebus

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [To the memory of an excellent and beautiful 
girl of 17, belonging to the village of Brienen, who perished on 
the 13th of January, 1809, whilst giving help on the occasion of 
the breaking up of the ice on the Rhine, and the bursting of the 
dam of Cleverham.]

THE DAM BREAKS DOWN, THE ICE-PLAIN GROWLS,
THE FLOODS ARISE, THE WATER...Read more of this...

Platonic

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I knew it the first of the summer, 
I knew it the same at the end, 
That you and your love were plighted, 
But couldn’t you be my friend? 
Couldn’t we sit in the twilight, 
Couldn’t we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
To bind us, and nothing more? 

There was not a word of folly
Spoken between us...Read more of this...

Where We Live Now

by Philip Levine
 1 

We live here because the houses 
are clean, the lawns run 
right to the street 

and the streets run away. 
No one walks here. 
No one wakens at night or dies. 

The cars sit open-eyed 
in the driveways. 
The lights are on all day. 

2 

At home forever, she has removed 
her long foreign names 
that stained her...Read more of this...

The Red Son

by Carl Sandburg
 I LOVE your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you.
But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push, the endless mysterious command,
Saying:
"I leave you behind--
You for the little hills and the years...Read more of this...

The Bonnie Lass o Ruily

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the village of Ruily there lived a bonnie lass
With red, pouting lips which few lasses could surpass,
And her eyes were as azure the blue sky,
Which caused Donald McNeill to heave many a love sigh 

Beyond the township of Ruily she never had been,
This pretty maid with tiny feet and aged eighteen;
And when Donald would ask her to...Read more of this...

Death of the Bird

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.

And being home,...Read more of this...

Going Away

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Walking to-day on the Common, 
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him, 
'Do you know I am going away? '
I had never seen their faces, 
May never see them again; 
Yet the words the stranger uttered, 
Stirred me with nameless pain.

For I knew some heart would miss him, 
Would ache at his going away!...Read more of this...

A Prodigal

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare--
even to the sow that always ate her young--
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after...Read more of this...

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