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Famous Going On Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Going On 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 on poems. These examples illustrate what a famous going on poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ow for certain 
That I should never be condemned again 
To see him with the other; and all the while
There was a battle going on within me 
Of hate that fought remorse—if you must have it— 
Never to win,… never to win but once, 
And having won, to lose disastrously, 
And as it was to prove, interminably—
Or till an end of living may annul, 
If so it be, the nameless obligation 
That I have not the Christian revenue 
In me to pay. A man who has no gold, 
Or an equivalent, ...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...-- 
And thereby, for his too consuming vision,
Empowered him out of nature; though to see him,
You'd never guess what's going on inside him.
He'll break out some day like a keg of ale
With too much independent frenzy in it;
And all for collaring what he knows won't keep,
And what he'd best forget -- but that he can't.
You'll have it, and have more than I'm foretelling;
And there'll be such a roaring at the Globe
As never stunned the bleeding gladiators.
He'll have...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...ne, removes his greasy fedora, and begins 
to untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him 
wondering what's going on. A middle-aged woman carrying 
a loaf of fresh bread asks him to step aside so she 
can enter, ascend the two steep flights to her apartment, 
and begin the daily task of preparing lunch for her Monsieur. 
Vallejo pretends he hears nothing or perhaps he truly 
hears nothing so absorbed is he in this odd task consuming 
his late morning. ...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...br> 
Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn. 

They’re drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate, 
And set Golumpus going on the grass;
He knows the corner where it’s best to wait 
And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass; 
The corner where old foxes make their track 
To the Long Spinney; that’s the place to be. 
The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
And then a cub looks out; and ‘Tally-o-back!’ 
He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,— 
All the clean...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...g frost.





52



Time after time

Time out of mind

I have searched for you,

Unending as my song

The search is going on.





53



They have washed the town hall walls and made new

The stones; Back Lane was demolished a week after I found it;

The gas lamp anchored to the wall is gone, the cobbles

Sold off, the steel base of an office block already raised.

Upper Accommodation Road no longer forks in two, one way

Had Deidre’s mother’s shop, with odds and ...Read more of this...



by Larkin, Philip
...Once i am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting seats and stone 
and little books; sprawlings of flowers cut
For Sunday brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense musty unignorable silence 
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless I take off
My cylce-clips in awkward revrence ...Read more of this...

by Harcombe, Dale
...n when it came, like waves
  gentling in his life.
  Institutions, foster homes,
  he knew them all.
  Fourteen going on ninety.
  Knowledge gleamed in his eyes.
  Though he has since been
  swept out of reach,
  particles of sand cling and
  memories are water-cold companions.



*first published Westerly Autumn 1995...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...abinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

N...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...ck together] beginneth not, but connects and continues. 

For Y is young -- the Lord direct me in the better way of going on in the Fifth year of my jeopardy June the 17th N.S. 1760. God be gracious to Dr YOUNG. 

For Z is zest. God give us all a relish of our duty. 

For Action and Speaking are one according to God and the Ancients. 

For the approaches of Death are by illumination. 

For a man cannot have Publick Spirit, who is void of pr...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...g to tuck the bag beneath your elbow,
Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting
With laughter, but keeping the drone going on
Interminably, between catches of breath.

*

The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back of the byre door, biding its time
Until spring airs spelled lime in a work-bucket
And a potstick to mix it in with water.
Those smells brought tears to the eyes, we inhaled
A kind of greeny burning and thought of brimstone.
But...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...an,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn *****!

Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up l...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach,
I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach.
Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound,
You couldn't even call out my name.
You were helpless and so was I,
But unfortunately throughou...Read more of this...

by Justice, Donald
...Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.

We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...distant

voice shouting, "The answer is no ! You already woke up the

kids. They have to have their rest. We're going on a four-

mile hike tomorrow up to Fish Konk Lake. Try someplace

else. "...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ng it over and over?
You’ve done more than you had a right to think
You could do—now. You know the risk you take
In going on.”

“Our snow-storms as a rule
Aren’t looked on as man-killers, and although
I’d rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep
Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,
Than the man fighting it to keep above it,
Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?
Their bulk in water would be frozen rock...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...his is the lair of the landlady

She is
a raw voice
loose in the rooms beneath me.

the continuous henyard
squabble going on below
thought in this house like
the bicker of blood through the head.

She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells
that bulge in under my doorsill;
she presides over my
meagre eating, generates
the light for eyestrain.

From her I rent my time:
she slams
my days like doors.
Nothing is mine.

and when I dream images
of daring escapes ...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...They halt!" "Retreating!" "They come back!" The guns are done!" 
But the calmer spirits, listening, said: "Our guns are going on." 
And the friend and foe in Buckland felt two different kinds of thrills 
When they heard the Charlestown cannon talking on the Buckland hills. 

And the quiet man of Buckland sent a message in that day, 
And he gave the British soldiers just two hours to march away. 
And they hang men there no longer, there is peace on land and wave; 
...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...re my ship is berthed. But worse, far worse 
Than Baghdad, is this roadstead, the brown sails, 
All the enginery of going on sea, 
The tackle and the rigging, tholes and sweeps, 
The prows built to put by the waves, the masts 
Stayed for a hurricane; and lo, that line 
Of gilded water there! the sun has drawn 
In a long narrow band of shining oil 
His light over the sea; how evilly move 
Ripples along that golden skin! -- the gleam 
Works like a muscular thing! like the h...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls o...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...ast Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one-ten in the morning,
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Going On poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things