Famous Look Back Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Look 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 look back poems. These examples illustrate what a famous look back poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...don't have even a book of ABC's
that lives on this street
and carries my name on its door!
But what the hell...
I don't look back,
the lead dirt of the composing room
on my face,
seventy-five cents in my pocket,
SPRING IN THE AIR...
*
The piece got left in the middle.
It rained and swamped the lines.
But oh! what I would have written...
The starving writer sitting on his three-thousand-page
three-volume manuscript
wouldn't stare at the window of the kebab joint
but with...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...the top of the mast,
Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For my sake sail, and never look back,
Said the looking land.
Sails drank the wind, and white as milk
He sped into the drinking dark;
The sun shipwrecked west on a pearl
And the moon swam out of its hulk.
Funnels and masts went by in a whirl.
Good-bye to the man on the sea-legged deck
To the gold gut that sings on his reel
To the bait that stalked out of the sack,
For we saw him thr...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...witching!" Breathed, "I am bewitched!"
--She said to her godmother, "Men!"
And, later, looking down to see her flesh
Look back up from under lace, the ashy gauze
And pulsing marble of a bridal veil,
She wished it all a widow's coal-black weeds.
A sullen wife and a reluctant mother,
She sat all day in silence by the fire.
Better, later, to stare past her sons' sons,
Her daughters' daughter, and tell stories to the fire.
But best, dead, damned, to rock forever
Besid...Read more of this...
by
Jarrell, Randall
...r kind resound their maker's praise
63 Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays?
10
64 When present times look back to Ages past
65 And men in being fancy those are dead,
66 It makes things gone perpetually to last
67 And calls back months and years that long since fled.
68 It makes a man more aged in conceit
69 Than was Methuselah or's grand-sire great,
70 While of their persons and their acts his mind doth treat.
11
71 Sometimes in Eden fair he seems to be...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...s;
I loved well the stately and rapid river;
The men and women I saw were all near to me;
Others the same—others who look back on me, because I look’d forward to them;
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)
5
What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.
6
I too lived—Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;
I too walk’d the str...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...il they saturate;
And we, with faces eastward set,
Stand sightless of the morning yet.
And many for pure sorrow's sake
Look back and stretch back hands to take
Gifts of night's giving, ease and sleep,
Flowers of night's grafting, strong to steep
The soul in dreams it will not break,
Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweep
Its lifted eyelids nigh to wake
With subtle plumes and lulling breath
That soothe its weariness to death.
And many, called of hope and pride,
Fall ere the...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...1
GREAT are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
warriors,
and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out with you, or sink with you.
Great is Youth—equally great is Old Age—great are ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...eam.
He did not join her
on that final cruise.
(He was on his own final cruise).
Did he want to?
I would wager yes.
I look back with love and sorrow
at them both--
dear teachers--
but she shines like Miss Liberty
to Emma Lazarus' hordes,
while he gazes within,
always, at his own
impenetrable jungle....Read more of this...
by
Jong, Erica
...
Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter
And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter.
except as a memory of rest or water.
Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise
that she woke me up at all....Read more of this...
by
Berman, David
...dubious deeds to know."
And she to me, "There is no greater woe
In all Hell's depths than cometh when those who
Look back to Eden. But if thou wouldst learn
Our love's first root, I can but weep and tell.
One day, and for delight in idleness,
- Alone we were, without suspicion, -
We read together, and chanced the page to turn
Where Galahad tells the tale of Lancelot,
How love constrained him. Oft our meeting eyes,
Confessed the theme, and conscious cheek...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ll, huge and black.
But the heart of his wife whispered stronger and stranger:
"It's not very late, you have time to look back
At these rose turrets of your native Sodom,
The square where you sang, and the yard where you span,
The windows looking from your cozy home
Where you bore children for your dear man."
She looked -- and her eyes were instantly bound
By pain -- they couldn't see any more at all:
Her fleet feet grew into the stony ground,
Her body turned into...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ou from their board.
So, when the order comes: "Attack!"
And the assaulting wave deploys,
And the heart trembles to look back
On life and all its joys;
Or in a ditch that they seem near
To find, and round your shallow trough
Drop the big shells that you can hear
Coming a half mile off;
When, not to hear, some try to talk,
And some to clean their guns, or sing,
And some dig deeper in the chalk -- -
I look upon my ring:
And nerves relax that were most tense,
A...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...a girl,
Her wet hair heavy on her like a helmet,
Who, leaning on a log, looked back at Paul.
And that made Paul in turn look back
To see if it was anyone behind him
That she was looking at instead of him.
(Murphy had been there watching all the time,
But from a shed where neither of them could see him.)
There was a moment of suspense in birth
When the girl seemed too waterlogged to live,
Before she caught her first breath with a gasp
And laughed. Then she climbed slowly to he...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...is your wiser spirit speaks,
Rembrandt. If you believe him, why complain?
If not, why paint? And why, in any event,
Look back for the old joy and the old roses,
Or the old fame? They are all gone together,
And Saskia with them; and with her left out,
They would avail no more now than one strand
Of Samson’s hair wound round his little finger
Before the temple fell. Nor more are you
In any sudden danger to forget
That in Apollo’s house there are no clocks
Or calendars...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...mory's store
A help for that which lies before
To guide their course aright;
Then, hush thy plaints and calm thy fears;
Look back on these departed years,
And, say, what meets thy sight?'
'I see, far back, a helpless child,
Feeble and full of causeless fears,
Simple and easily beguiled
To credit all it hears.
More timid than the wild wood-dove,
Yet trusting to another's care,
And finding in protecting love
Its only refuge from despair, -
Its only balm for every woe,
The on...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Anne
...even mine.'
'Really?' I saw her head incline,
I saw her ready to assert
Americans are easily hurt.
XVII
Strange to look back to the days
So long ago
When a friend was almost a foe,
When you hurried to find a phrase
For your easy light dispraise
Of a spirit you did not know,
A nature you could not plumb
In the moment of meeting,
Not guessing a day would come
When your heart would ache to hear
Other men's tongues repeating
Those same light phrases that jest and ...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...and cling
of this despondent chaff.
3
Yet for a moment, the children
could play truant from their tuition.
4
When I look back, I see a collapsing
accordion of my receding houses,
and myself receding
to a boy of twenty-five or thirty,
too shopworn for less, too impressionable for more—
blackmaned, illmade
in a washed blue workshirt and coalblack trousers,
moving from house to house,
still seeking a boy's license
to see the countryside without arrival.
Hell?
Darling,
terr...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...The saris go by me from the embassies.
Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet.
They look back at the leopard like the leopard.
And I. . . .
this print of mine, that has kept its color
Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null
Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so
To my bed, so to my grave, with no
Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief,
The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief--
Only I complain. . . . this servicea...Read more of this...
by
Jarrell, Randall
...Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence....Read more of this...
by
Brecht, Bertolt
...words, I'd die.
*
"I'll wait to hear from you. I must. Please let me hope.
Give me one look, from eyes I hardly dare
To look back at. Or scupper my dream
By scolding me. I've given you rope
To hang me: tell me I'm mistaken. You're so much in
The world; while I just live here, bent on jam
And harvest, songs and books. That's not complaint.
We live such different lives. So - this is the end. It's taken
All night. I'm scared to read it back. I'm faint
With shame and fear. But...Read more of this...
by
Padel, Ruth
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