Famous Return Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Return poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous return poems. These examples illustrate what a famous return poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rg Gregory
(to where the ashes of both
my parents are strewn)
i)
ok the pair of you lie still
what's disturbing me need pass
no fretful hand over your peace
this world's vicissitudes are stale
fodder for you who feed the grass
some particles of your two dusts
by moon's wish accident or wind
may have leapt that late-life wound
refound in you the rhapsodists
first-married days had twinned
i've come today...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
I will go to the lovely Sur Rivers
And dip my arms in them up to the shoulders.
I will find my accounting where the alder...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
'Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil th' unused armour's rust,
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through advent'rous war...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of waters rushing down the mountain...Read more of this...
by
Robert Duncan
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.
Wherefrom fall all architectures...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHEN wild war’s deadly blast was blawn,
And gentle peace returning,
Wi’ mony a sweet babe fatherless,
And mony a widow mourning;
I left the lines and tented field,
Where lang I’d been a lodger,
My humble knapsack a’ my wealth,
A poor and honest sodger.
A leal, light heart was in my breast,
My hand unstain’d wi’ plunder;
And for fair Scotia hame...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
I like divorce. I love to compose
letters of resignation; now and then
I send one in and leave in a lemon-
hued Huff or a Snit with four on the floor.
Do you like the scent of a hollyhock?
To each his own. I love a burning bridge.
I like to watch the small boat go over
the falls -- it swirls in a circle
like...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Peace is declared, and I return
To 'Ackneystadt, but not the same;
Things 'ave transpired which made me learn
The size and meanin' of the game.
I did no more than others did,
I don't know where the change began;
I started as a average kid,
I finished as a thinkin' man.
If England was what England seems
An' not the England of our dreams,
But only putty, brass,...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return From Ireland
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing,
His numbers languishing.
'Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unus?d armour's rust:
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Ye mountains and glens of Old Ireland,
I've returned home to ye again;
During my absence from ye
My heart always felt great pain.
Oh, how I long'd to see you dear Nora,
And the old folks at home;
And the beautiful Lakes o' Killarney,
Where we oft together did roam.
Ye beautiful Lakes of Killarney,
Ye are welcome to me again;
I will now reform my...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Ye mountains and glens of fair Scotland I'm with ye once again,
During my absence from ye my heart was like to break in twain;
Oh! How I longed to see you and the old folks at home,
And with my lovely Jeannie once more in the green woods to roam.
Now since I've returned safe home again
I will try and be...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
"They" -- Traffics and Discoveries
Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs' dove-winged races--
Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome,
Plucking the splendid robes of the passers-by, and with pitiful! faces
Begging what Princes and Powers refused:--"Ah, please will you let us go home?"
Over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them Mary the Mother,
Kneeled and caressed...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
and follow where it led past fields of tall sweet corn
in August or in winter those of frozen sheaves.
Often he'd leave the Terraplane beside the highway
to enter the...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
As I sat down by Saddle Stream
To bathe my dusty feet there,
A boy was standing on the bridge
Any girl would meet there.
As I went over Woody Knob
And dipped into the hollow,
A youth was coming up the hill
Any maid would follow.
Then in I turned at my own gate,—
And nothing to be sad for—
To such a...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Ill lay he long, upon this last return,
unvisited. The doctors put everything in the hospital
into reluctant Henry
and the nurses took it out & put it back,
smiling like fiends, with their eternal 'we.'
Henry did a slow burn,
collapsing his dialogue to their white ears
& shiny on the flanges. Sanka he drank
until his memories blurred
& Valerie was coming, lower he sank
and lovely....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
So now I take a bitter road
Whereon no bourne I see,
And wearily I lift the load
That once I bore with glee.
For me no more by sea or shore
Adventure's star shall burn,
As I forsake wild ways to take
The Trail of No Return.
Such paths of peril I have trod:
In sun and shade they lay.
And some went...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
How can I then return in happy plight
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
When day's oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night, and night by day oppressed?
And each, though enemies to either's reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the...Read more of this...
by
Mihai Eminescu
"Forest, trusted friend and true,
Forest dear, how do you do?
Since the day i saw you last
Many, many years have passed
And though you still steadfast stand
I have traveled many a land."
"Yea, and I, what have I done?
Watched the years their seasons run;
Heard the squalls that through me groan
Ere my singing birds have...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
I visited many places,
Some of them quite
Exotic and far away,
But I always returned to myself.
...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
Gliding through the still air, he made no sound;
Wing-shod and deft, dropped almost at her feet,
And searched the ghostly regiments and found
The living eyes, the tremor of breath, the beat
Of blood in all that bodiless underground.
She left her majesty; she loosed the zone
Of darkness and put by the rod of dread.
Standing, she turned...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
SO grieves th' adventurous merchant, when he throws
All the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main, to save from wrack
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back
These letters : yet so powerful is your sway
As if you bid me die, I must obey.
Go then, blest papers, you shall kiss those...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
You've 'eard 'ow young Albert Ramsbottom,
In the Zoo up at Blackpool one year,
With a stick and 'orse's 'ead 'andle,
Gave a lion a poke in the ear.
The name of the lion was Wallace,
The poke in the ear made 'im wild;
And before you could say 'Bob's your Uncle,'
'E'd up and 'e'd swallered the child.
'E were sorry the moment 'e'd done it,
With...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
From the dull confines of the drooping west,
To see the day spring from the pregnant east,
Ravish'd in spirit, I come, nay more, I fly
To thee, blest place of my nativity!
Thus, thus with hallow'd foot I touch the ground,
With thousand blessings by thy fortune crown'd.
O fruitful Genius! that bestowest here
An everlasting plenty year by year;
O place! O people! manners! framed...Read more of this...
by
Edward Field
He didn't die in the whirlpool by the mill
where he had fallen in after a wild chase
by all the people of the town.
Somehow he clung to an overhanging rock
until the villagers went away.
And when he came out, he was changed forever,
that soft heart of his had hardened
and he really was a monster now.
He was out to pay them back,
to...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
And there we were together again—
Together again, we three:
Morgan, Fingal, fiddle, and all,
They had come for the night with me.
The spirit of joy was in Morgan’s wrist,
There were songs in Fingal’s throat;
And secure outside, for the spray to drench,
Was a tossed and empty boat.
And there were the pipes, and there was the...Read more of this...
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