Famous Returning Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Returning poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous returning poems. These examples illustrate what a famous returning poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...irmest seat;
Another age shall see his empire fall.
Yet in the east the light of truth shall shine,
And like the sun returning after storms
Which long had raged through a sunless sky,
Shall beam beningly on forsaken lands.
The day serene once more on Zion hill
Descending gradual, shall in radiance beam
On Canaan's happy land. Her fav'rite seers
Have intercourse divine with this pure source;
Perennial thence rich streams of light shall flow,
To each adjoining vale a...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...the crest of the cliffs, but he rode toward them,
saying that the Wederish people would welcome
the bright-mailed men returning by ship. (ll. 1888-95)
Then the sea-broad ship, with the ringed prow,
was loaded on the beach with war-weeds,
with treasures and with horses. The mast loomed
over Hrothgar’s hoarded-treasures.
Then he gave to the boat-warden a sword
bound with gold, which afterwards,
he would be the more worthy on the mead-bench
for that treasure, that an...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...trail of the fiend,
spirit accurst: too cruel that sorrow,
too long, too loathsome. Not late the respite;
with night returning, anew began
ruthless murder; he recked no whit,
firm in his guilt, of the feud and crime.
They were easy to find who elsewhere sought
in room remote their rest at night,
bed in the bowers, {2a} when that bale was shown,
was seen in sooth, with surest token, --
the hall-thane’s {2b} hate. Such held themselves
far and fast who the fiend outra...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...und, like the voice of a vast congregation,
Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges.
'T was the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean,
With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying landward.
Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking;
And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in
ruins.
PART THE SECOND
I
Many a weary year ha...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.
Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie....Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...rned there the causes of his victory.
"And later to the third great Heaven was caught
The last Apostle, and thence returning brought
The proofs of our salvation. But, for me,
I am not &Aelig;neas, nay, nor Paul, to see
Unspeakable things that depths or heights can show,
And if this road for no sure end I go
What folly is mine? But any words are weak.
Thy wisdom further than the things I speak
Can search the event that would be."
Here I
stayed
My steps ...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...took
That morn when first they parted: by the tree
Of knowledge he must pass; there he her met,
Scarce from the tree returning; in her hand
A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled,
New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused.
To him she hasted; in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology too prompt;
Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed.
Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay?
Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived
Thy presence; agon...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d travel out on foot on the ice—I have
a
small axe to cut holes in the ice;
Behold me, well-clothed, going gaily, or returning in the afternoon—my brood of tough
boys
accompaning me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so well as they
love to
be with me,
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.
Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots, where they are
sunk
with heavy stones, (I know ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...the east: then homeward and to bed:
Where she, who kept a tender Christian hope
Haunting a holy text, and still to that
Returning, as the bird returns, at night,
`Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,'
Said, `Love, forgive him:' but he did not speak;
And silenced by that silence lay the wife,
Remembering her dear Lord who died for all,
And musing on the little lives of men,
And how they mar this little by their feuds.
But while the two were sleeping, a full tide
Rose wit...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...he lord of the Golden Dragon
Ran in the woods alone.
And if ever he climbed the crest of luck
And set the flag before,
Returning as a wheel returns,
Came ruin and the rain that burns,
And all began once more.
And naught was left King Alfred
But shameful tears of rage,
In the island in the river
In the end of all his age.
In the island in the river
He was broken to his knee:
And he read, writ with an iron pen,
That God had wearied of Wessex men
And given their country, fiel...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...sp; They never would have done. —I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning. Alas! the gratitude of men Has oftner left me mourning. LINES Written in early Spring. I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. &n...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...y sheer annihilation if I miss:
Think--if thou shouldst be false--think of thy truth.
55
These meagre rhymes, which a returning mood
Sometimes o'errateth, I as oft despise;
And knowing them illnatured, stiff and rude,
See them as others with contemptuous eyes.
Nay, and I wonder less at God's respect
For man, a minim jot in time and space,
Than at the soaring faith of His elect,
That gift of gifts, the comfort of His grace.
O truth unsearchable, O heavenly love,
Most infini...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...scandalous hive of those wild bees
That made such honey in his realm. Howbeit
Some little of this marvel he too saw,
Returning o'er the plain that then began
To darken under Camelot; whence the King
Looked up, calling aloud, "Lo, there! the roofs
Of our great hall are rolled in thunder-smoke!
Pray Heaven, they be not smitten by the bolt."
For dear to Arthur was that hall of ours,
As having there so oft with all his knights
Feasted, and as the stateliest under heaven...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...his courage is perfect! And that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Snark."
He would joke with hy{ae}nas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
"Just to keep up its spirits," he said.
He came as a Baker: but owned, when too late--
And it drove the poor Bellman half-mad--
He could only bake Bridecake--for which, I may state,
No materials were to be had.
The last of the crew needs especial r...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...* I will of Theseus a lite**, *cease speaking **little
And speak of Palamon and of Arcite.
The day approacheth of their returning,
That evereach an hundred knights should bring,
The battle to darraine* as I you told; *contest
And to Athens, their covenant to hold,
Hath ev'reach of them brought an hundred knights,
Well-armed for the war at alle rights.
And sickerly* there trowed** many a man, *surely **believed
That never, sithen* that the world began, *since
For to speak...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...l weak and withered of their force,
Wait on the verge of dark eternity,
Like stranded wrecks, the tide returning hoarse,
To sweep them from out sight! Time rolls his ceaseless course.
Yet live there still who can remember well,
How, when a mountain chief his bugle blew,
Both field and forest, dingle, cliff; and dell,
And solitary heath, the signal knew;
And fast the faithful clan around him drew.
What...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...that thinks no Ill: But These, the Muse,
Whose Charity, unlimited, extends
As wide as Nature works, disdains to sing,
Returning to her nobler Theme in view --
FOR, see! where Winter comes, himself, confest,
Striding the gloomy Blast. First Rains obscure
Drive thro' the mingling Skies, with Tempest foul;
Beat on the Mountain's Brow, and shake the Woods,
That, sounding, wave below. The dreary Plain
Lies overwhelm'd, and lost. The bellying Clouds
Combine, and deepening into ...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...d its cold bright car,
With savage music, stunning music, crost
"The forest, and as if from some dread war
Triumphantly returning, the loud million
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.--
"A moving arch of victory the vermilion
And green & azure plumes of Iris had
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
"And underneath aetherial glory clad
The wilderness, and far before her flew
The tempest of the splendour which forbade
Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;--the crew
See...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...y is sowing the light rain.
Beats with wings upon the window
The white, the white Spirits' day.
For a friend to be returning
From the sea - especial hour.
I am dreaming of the far shore,
Of the stone, sand and tower.
I will enter, meeting light,
On the top of one of these towers.
In the land of swamps and fields
There are in memory no towers.
Only I will sit on the porch,
There, where dense shadows lay.
Help me in my fright, at last,
The white, the white S...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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