Famous Retrospective Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Year of Meteors 1859 '60

by Walt Whitman
 YEAR of meteors! brooding year! 
I would bind in words retrospective, some of your deeds and signs; 
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad; 
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia; 
(I was at hand—silent I stood, with teeth shut close—I watch’d;
I stood very near you, old man,...Read more of this...

Turn O Libertad

by Walt Whitman
 TURN, O Libertad, for the war is over, 
(From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world,) 
Turn from lands retrospective, recording proofs of the past; 
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past; 
From the chants of the feudal world—the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste;
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d...Read more of this...

Ashes of Soldiers

by Walt Whitman
 ASHES of soldiers! 
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought, 
Lo! the war resumes—again to my sense your shapes, 
And again the advance of armies. 

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending, 
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, 
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves, 
In...Read more of this...

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