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Famous Run Away Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...t play!"
What makes you want to wander there with all the world
 between.
Oh, Mother, call your son again or else he'll run away.
(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)

"How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street?"
I haven't time to answer now--the men are falling fast.
The guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat.
(If you take the first step, you will take the last!)

"How far is St. Helena from the field of Austerlitz?"
You couldn't hear me if...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...xt, if vext I had not beene. 
LXXXVIII 

Out, traytor Absence, dar'st thou counsell me
From my deare captainesse to run away,
Because in braue array heere marcheth she,
That, to win mee, oft shewes a present pay?
Is faith so weake? or is such force in thee?
When sun is hid, can starres such beames display?
Cannot heau'ns food, once felt, keepe stomakes free
From base desire on earthly cates to pray?
Tush, Absence; while thy mistes eclipse that light,
My orphan sen...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip
...eds takes away the steely glare of Sutton

Weighing down on me like breeze-blocks by the ton,

When all I want to do is run away and make a home

In Keighley, catch a bus to Haworth and walk and walk

Till human talk is silenced by the sun....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...s to blur and buzz soft all summer,
So I shall make little fool homes with doors, always open doors for all and each to run away when they want to.
I shall come just like that even though now it is early and I am not yet footloose,
Even though I am still looking for an undertaker with a raw, wind-bitten face and a dance in his feet.
I make a date with you (put it down) for six o’clock in the evening a thousand years from now.

All I can give you now is broken-face gargoyles.
...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...s in a gale, the sloping village street.

How? When? Why?

‘The truth’ - if such an entity exists - 

Is that I want to run away....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...for anyone.
Then a man said:
 BETTER TO DIE FREE
 THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.

With John Brown at Harper's Ferry, ******* died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
"Or if it would," thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hear...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Langston
...What happened to the boy I was?
Why did he run away?
And leave me old and thinking, like
There'd been no yesterday?
What happened then?
Was I that boy?
Who laughed and swam in the bund*
I there no going back?
No recompense?
Is there nothing?
No refund?...Read more of this...
by Milligan, Spike
...ld change your boasts to fear,
As easily, as sour small beer;
And make your feet from dreadful fray,
By native instinct run away.
Britain, depend on't, will take on her
T' assert her dignity and honor,
And ere she'd lose your share of pelf,
Destroy your country, and herself.
For has not North declared they fight
To gain substantial rev'nue by't,
Denied he'd ever deign to treat,
Till on your knees and at his feet?
And feel you not a trifling ague
From Van's "Delenda est Cartha...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...to paint, in vision'd show,
The mighty nothings done by Howe;
What towns he takes in mortal fray,
As stations whence to run away;
What triumphs gain'd in conflict warm,
No aid to us, to them no harm;
For still th' event alike is fatal,
Whate'er success attend the battle,
Whether he vict'ry gain or lose it,
Who ne'er had skill enough to use it.
And better 'twere, at their expense,
T' have drubb'd him into common sense,
And waked, by bastings on his rear,
Th' activity, though b...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...othing not built with hands of course is sacred.
But here is not a question of what's sacred;
Rather of what to face or run away from.
I'd hate to be a runaway from nature.
And neither would I choose to be a puke
Who cares not what be does in company,
And when he can't do anything, falls back
On words, and tries his worst to make words speak
Louder than actions, and sometimes achieves it.
It seems a narrow choice the age insists on
8ow about being a good Greek, for instance)
...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...anybody like me to buckle
any swashes?
This is my euphorian day,
I will ring welkins and before anybody answers I will run away.
I will tame me a caribou
And bedeck it with marabou.
I will pen me my memoirs.
Ah youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!
I wasn't much of a hand for the boudoirs,
I was generally to be found where the food was.
Does anybody want any flotsam?
I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam?
I can getsam.
I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,
I can ...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...e he'd come within a day
Or so of having one, and then been Jilted;
Others because he'd had one once, a good one,
Who'd run away with someone else and left him;
And others still because he had one now
He only had to be reminded of--
He was all duty to her in a minute:
He had to run right off to look her up,
As if to say, "That's so, how is my wife?
I hope she isn't getting into mischief."
No one was anxious to get rid of Paul.
He'd been the hero of the mountain camps
Ever sin...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ed like the sun where that cloud is passing now
All settled here for ever on its brow


I never thought that joys would run away from boys
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such
 summer joys
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the...Read more of this...
by Clare, John
...1
I WANDER all night in my vision, 
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, 
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, 
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, 
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still! 
How quiet they breathe, the lit...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...e
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving....Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...d stood. 
But I my time abuse, my eyes by day
Center'd on thee, by night my heart on fire--
Letting my number'd moments run away--
Nor e'en 'twixt night and day to heaven aspire:
So true it is that what the eye seeth not
But slow is loved, and loved is soon forgot. 

36
O my life's mischief, once my love's delight,
That drew'st a mortgage on my heart's estate,
Whose baneful clause is never out of date,
Nor can avenging time restore my right:
Whom first to lose sounded that no...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...oors or without,  And crazily, and wearily  I went my work about.  Oft-times I thought to run away;  For me it was a woeful day.   Sir! 'twas a precious flock to me,  As dear as my own children be;  For daily with my growing store  I loved my children more and more.  Alas! it was an evil time;  God cursed me in my sore distress,  I prayed, yet every day I thoug...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...'d lick the fellers that call round on sister after tea,
An' I'd keep on lickin' folks till I got through!
You bet! I'd run away
From my lessons to my play,
An' I'd shoo the hens, an' tease the cat, an' kiss the girls all day--
If I darst; but I darsen't!...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty 
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of 
the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with 
asthma and she thought this made me a favorite

I wanted to be like the girl in the made-for-tv movie Maybe I'll Come Home
in the Spring which was supposed to make you ...Read more of this...
by Duhamel, Denise
...nd bless. And blame.

(Moonless night.

Vase in the kitchen)



 Fall

Explain duty to remain to the end. 

Duty not to run away from the good. 

The good.

(Beauty is not an issue.) 

A wise man wants? 

A master.



 Winter

Oh my beloved I speak of the absolute jewels.

Dwelling in place for example.

In fluted listenings.

In panting waters human-skinned to the horizon.

Muzzled the deep.

Fermenting the surface.

Wrecks left at the bottom, yes.

Space birdless. 

Light o...Read more of this...
by Graham, Jorie

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things