Famous Missing You Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lain in Nature -- so suffice us

by Emily Dickinson
 Lain in Nature -- so suffice us
The enchantless Pod
When we advertise existence
For the missing Seed --

Maddest Heart that God created
Cannot move a sod
Pasted by the simple summer
On the Longed for Dead...Read more of this...

How MGinnis went missing

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Let us cease our idle chatter, 
Let the tears bedew our cheek, 
For a man from Tallangatta 
Has been missing for a week. 
Where the roaring flooded Murray 
Covered all the lower land, 
There he started in a hurry, 
With a bottle in his hand. 

And his fate is hid for ever, 
But the public seem to think 
That...Read more of this...

How Could You Not

by Galway Kinnell
 -- for Jane kenyon


It is a day after many days of storms.
Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;
small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower
visible against the firs douses the crocuses.
We knew it would happen one day this week.
Now, when I learn you have died, I go
to the open door and look across at New Hampshire
and see...Read more of this...

Homers Seeing-Eye Dog

by William Matthews
 Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked...Read more of this...

On Going Unnoticed

by Robert Frost
 As vain to raise a voice as a sigh
In the tumult of free leaves on high.
What are you in the shadow of trees
Engaged up there with the light and breeze?

Less than the coral-root you know
That is content with the daylight low,
And has no leaves at all of its own;
Whose spotted flowers hang meanly down.

You grasp the bark by a...Read more of this...

The Alligator Bride

by Donald Hall
 The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
the Empire Table
while the men shrieked
repossessing the gold umbrella.

Now the beard on my clock turns white.
My cat stares into dark corners
missing her gold umbrella.
She is in love
with the Alligator Bride.

Ah, the tiny fine white
teeth! The Bride, propped...Read more of this...

Wilful Missing

by Rudyard Kipling
 (Deserters)
 There is a world outside the one you know,
 To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare--
 It is the place where "wilful-missings" go,
 As we can testify, for we are there.

 You may 'ave read a bullet laid us low,
 That we was gathered in "with reverent care"
 And buried proper. But it was not so,
 As we...Read more of this...

The Cymbaleer's Bride

by Victor Hugo
 ("Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne.") 
 
 {VI., October, 1825.} 


 My lord the Duke of Brittany 
 Has summoned his barons bold— 
 Their names make a fearful litany! 
 Among them you will not meet any 
 But men of giant mould. 
 
 Proud earls, who dwell in donjon keep, 
 And steel-clad knight and peer,...Read more of this...

Poem With Refrains

by Robert Pinsky
 The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog
Uncurling over the tainted city river,
A young girl rowing and her anxious father
Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever
Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer
Sulking in his tent. As though all stories began
With someone dying.

 When her mother died,
My mother refused to attend the funeral--
In fact, she sulked in her tent all through the...Read more of this...

Shake The Superflux!

by David Lehman
 I like walking on streets as black and wet as this one
now, at two in the solemnly musical morning, when everyone else
in this town emptied of Lestrygonians and Lotus-eaters
is asleep or trying or worrying why
they aren't asleep, while unknown to them Ulysses walks
into the shabby apartment I live in, humming and feeling
happy with the avant-garde weather we're having,
the winds...Read more of this...

In Due Form

by Laura Riding Jackson
 I do not doubt you.
I know you love me.
It is a fact of your indoor face,
A true fancy of your muscularity.
Your step is confident.
Your look is thorough.
Your stay-beside-me is a pillow
To roll over on
And sleep as on my own upon.

But make me a statement
In due form on endless foolscap
Witnessed before a notary
And sent by post, registered,
To be signed for...Read more of this...

the missing

by Suheir Hammad
 the way loss seeps
into neck hollows
and curls at temples
sits between front teeth
cavity
empty and waiting
for mourning to open
the way mourning stays
forever shadowing vision
shaping lives with memory
a drawer won't close
sleep elusive
smile illusive
the only real is grief
forever counting the days
minutes missing without knowing
so that one day 
you find yourself 
showering tears
missing that love
like sugar 
aches teeth...Read more of this...

Apples of Hesperides

by Amy Lowell
 Glinting golden through the trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Through the moon-pierced warp of night
Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,
Swaying to the kissing breeze
Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,
Apples of Hesperides!
Far and lofty yet they glimmer,
Apples of Hesperides!
Blinded by their radiant shimmer,
Pushing forward just for these;
Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,
Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,
Always thinking soon to seize
And possess the golden-glistening
Apples of Hesperides!
Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,
Apples of...Read more of this...

Bat

by D. H. Lawrence
 At evening, sitting on this terrace, 
When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara 
Departs, and the world is taken by surprise ... 

When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing 
Brown hills surrounding ... 

When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio 
A green light enters against stream, flush...Read more of this...

The Waters Chant

by Philip Levine
 Seven years ago I went into 
the High Sierras stunned by the desire 
to die. For hours I stared into a clear 
mountain stream that fell down 
over speckled rocks, and then I 
closed my eyes and prayed that when 
I opened them I would be gone 
and somewhere a purple and golden 
thistle would overflow with light. 
I...Read more of this...

The Night

by Hilaire Belloc
 Still a mystery,

I can’t figure out;

Race home from work,

Where life is without.
*****
I race to see you,

And hold you to me;

My mind says you’re there,

And my heart won’t see.
*****
I open the door,

It’s still a surprise:

You’re not there,

And tears fill my eyes.
*****
I need someone,

Or call on the phone;

But nothing breaks the silence,

Of these walls made of stone.
*****




I punish myself,

By refusing to...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIII: The Curious Wits

by Sir Philip Sidney
 The curious wits seeing dull pensiveness 
Bewray itself in my long settled eyes, 
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 

Some that know how my spring I did address, 
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies: 
Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
Think that I think state errors...Read more of this...

An Evening Of Poetry

by Barry Tebb
 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet...Read more of this...

Daddy Warbucks

by Anne Sexton
 In Memoriam

What's missing is the eyeballs
in each of us, but it doesn't matter
because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
You let me touch them, fondle the green faces
lick at their numbers and it lets you be
my "Daddy!" "Daddy!" and though I fought all alone
with molesters and crooks, I knew your money
would save me, your courage, your "I've had
considerable...Read more of this...

The Poet

by Hermann Hesse
 Only on me, the lonely one,
The unending stars of the night shine,
The stone fountain whispers its magic song,
To me alone, to me the lonely one
The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds
Move like dreams over the open countryside.
Neither house nor farmland,
Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me,
What is mine belongs to no one,
The plunging brook behind the veil...Read more of this...

The Missing All -- prevented Me

by Emily Dickinson
 The Missing All -- prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a Hinge --
Or Sun's extinction, be observed --
'Twas not so large that I
Could lift my Forehead from my work
For Curiosity....Read more of this...

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

by Anne Sexton
 If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Common
on speed and saltines,
pissing in the duck pond,
rapping with the street priest,
trading talk like blows,
another missing person,
would understand.

The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.

The...Read more of this...

Nymphidia The Court Of Fairy (excerpts)

by Michael Drayton
 But let us leave Queen Mab a while,
Through many a gate, o'er many a stile,
That now had gotten by this wile,
Her dear Pigwiggen kissing;
And tell how Oberon doth fare,
Who grew as mad as any hare,
When he had sought each place with care,
And found his queen was missing.
By grisly Pluto he doth swear,
He rent his clothes, and tore his hair,
And...Read more of this...

Im A Jazz Singer She Replied

by James A Emanuel
 He dug what she said:
bright jellies, smooth marmalade
spread on warm brown bread.

"Jazz" from drowsy lips
orchids lift to honeybees
floating on long sips.

"Jazz": quick fingerpops
pancake on a griddle-top
of memories. Stop.

"Jazz": mysterious
as nutmeg, missing fingers,
gold, Less serious.

"Jazz": cool bannister.
Don't need no stair. Ways to climb
when the sax is there....Read more of this...

London in July

by Amy Levy
 What ails my senses thus to cheat?
What is it ails the place,
That all the people in the street
Should wear one woman's face?

The London trees are dusty-brown
Beneath the summer sky;
My love, she dwells in London town,
Nor leaves it in July.

O various and intricate maze,
Wide waste of square and street;
Where, missing through unnumbered days,
We twain at last may meet!

And who cries...Read more of this...

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