Famous Take Home Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Wrong Way Home

by Edward Taylor
 All night a door floated down the river.
It tried to remember little incidents of pleasure
from its former life, like the time the lovers
leaned against it kissing for hours
and whispering those famous words.
Later, there were harsh words and a shoe
was thrown and the door was slammed.
Comings and goings by the thousands,
the early mornings and late nights, years, years.
O they've got...Read more of this...

I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone

by Stephen Dunn
 The dogs greet me, I descend
into their world of fur and tongues
and then my wife and I embrace
as if we'd just closed the door
in a motel, our two girls slip in
between us and we're all saying
each other's names and the dogs
Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,
people-style, seeking more love.
I've come home wanting to touch
everyone, everything; usually I...Read more of this...

This faithless world, my home, I have surveyed,

by Omar Khayyam
This faithless world, my home, I have surveyed,
Yea, and with all my wit deep question made,
But found no moon with face so bright as thine,
No cypress in such stateliness arrayed....Read more of this...

I never felt at Home -- Below

by Emily Dickinson
 I never felt at Home -- Below --
And in the Handsome Skies
I shall not feel at Home -- I know --
I don't like Paradise --

Because it's Sunday -- all the time --
And Recess -- never comes --
And Eden'll be so lonesome
Bright Wednesday Afternoons --

If God could make a visit --
Or ever took a Nap --
So not to see us...Read more of this...

The Hock-cart or Harvest Home

by Robert Herrick
 To the Right Honourable Mildmay, Earl of Westmoreland

Come, sons of summer, by whose toil 
We are the lords of wine and oil; 
By whose tough labours, and rough hands, 
We rip up first, then reap our lands. 
Crown'd with the ears of corn, now come, 
And to the pipe sing Harvest Home. 
Come forth, my lord, and see the...Read more of this...

Down Home

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Down home to-night the moonshine falls
Across a hill with daisies pied,
The pear tree by the garden gate
Beckons with white arms like a bride. 

A savor as of trampled fern
Along the whispering meadow stirs,
And, beacon of immortal love,
A light is shining through the firs. 

To my old gable window creeps
The night wind with a sigh and song,
And, weaving ancient sorceries,
Thereto...Read more of this...

The Home-Coming

by Robert William Service
 My boy's come back; he's here at last;
He came home on a special train.
My longing and my ache are past,
My only son is back again.
He's home with music, flags and flowers;
With peace and joy my heart's abrim;
He got here in the morning hours
With half the town to welcome him.

To hush my grief, night after night,
How I have digged my...Read more of this...

When the Children Come Home

by Henry Lawson
 On a lonely selection far out in the West 
An old woman works all the day without rest, 
And she croons, as she toils 'neath the sky's glassy dome, 
`Sure I'll keep the ould place till the childer come home.' 

She mends all the fences, she grubs, and she ploughs, 
She drives the old horse and she milks all...Read more of this...

The Humble Home

by Victor Hugo
 ("L'église est vaste et haute.") 
 
 {IV., June 29, 1839.} 


 The Church{1} is vast; its towering pride, its steeples loom on high; 
 The bristling stones with leaf and flower are sculptured wondrously; 
 The portal glows resplendent with its "rose," 
 And 'neath the vault immense at evening swarm 
 Figures of angel, saint, or demon's...Read more of this...

Bound Home to Mount Song

by Wang Wei
 The limpid river, past its bushes 
Running slowly as my chariot, 
Becomes a fellow voyager 
Returning home with the evening birds. 
A ruined city-wall overtops an old ferry, 
Autumn sunset floods the peaks. 
...Far away, beside Mount Song, 
I shall close my door and be at peace....Read more of this...

Home Thoughts From Abroad

by Robert Browning
 Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field...Read more of this...

Home Thoughts From The Sea

by Robert Browning
 Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;
"Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"—say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While...Read more of this...

the rest home

by Rg Gregory
 professor piebald
(the oldest man in the home) was meek
at the same time ribald
he clothed his matter (so to speak)
in latin and (was it) greek
it caused no great offence
to nobody did it make sense
to make a rude joke
in languages nobody spoke

once he'd changed the word agenda
at a home's committee meeting to pudenda
this sort of thing was tolerated by the other
inmates...Read more of this...

End of Another Home Holiday

by D. H. Lawrence
I

When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?

Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
    (Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on...Read more of this...

To Qiwu Qian Bound Home After Failing an Examination

by Wang Wei
 In a happy reign there should be no hermits; 
The wise and able should consult together.... 
So you, a man of the eastern mountains, 
Gave up your life of picking herbs 
And came all the way to the Gate of Gold -- 
But you found your devotion unavailing. 
...To spend the Day of No Fire on one of the...Read more of this...

Home For Thanksgiving

by Linda Pastan
 The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons'
as harsh
as the fathers'.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly--
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of...Read more of this...

I learned -- at least -- what Home could be --

by Emily Dickinson
 I learned -- at least -- what Home could be --
How ignorant I had been
Of pretty ways of Covenant --
How awkward at the Hymn

Round our new Fireside -- but for this --
This pattern -- of the Way --
Whose Memory drowns me, like the Dip
Of a Celestial Sea --

What Mornings in our Garden -- guessed --
What Bees -- for us...Read more of this...

Home

by Warsan Shire
No one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well.

your neighbours running faster than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home when home won't let you stay.

no...Read more of this...

Longings for Home

by Walt Whitman
 O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South! 
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me! 
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
 born—the
 grains,
 plants, rivers; 
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
 sands,
...Read more of this...

To A Daughter Leaving Home

by Linda Pastan
 When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye....Read more of this...

Back Home

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
 Thoughts, go your way home.
Embrace,
 depths of the soul and the sea.
In my view,
 it is
 stupid
to be
 always serene.
My cabin is the worst
 of all cabins - 
All night above me
 Thuds a smithy of feet.
All night,
 stirring the ceiling’s calm,
dancers stampede
 to a moaning motif:
“Marquita,
 Marquita,
Marquita my darling,
why won’t you,
 Marquita,
why won’t you love me …”
But why
...Read more of this...

Bound for your distant home

by Alexander Pushkin
 Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I’ve known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, ‘When we meet again,
in the shadow...Read more of this...

Night In The Old Home

by Thomas Hardy
 When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, 
And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, 
And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, 
My perished people who housed them here come back to me.

They come and seat them around in their mouldy places, 
Now and then bending towards me a glance of...Read more of this...

The hills of home

by Omer Tarin
Of my own salt, these hills are made
I am made of them
grey stone
red dust
black wash--
from the jagged edge I look down
the land stares up at me
it is as me, stark and thorny,
it prickles as I do, 
it is of my own salt.






(c) Omer Tarin, 'A Sad Piper' 1994...Read more of this...

Sweet Stay-at-Home

by William Henry Davies
 Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content, 
Thou knowest of no strange continent; 
Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep 
A gentle motion with the deep; 
Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas, 
Where scent comes forth in every breeze. 
Thou hast not seen the rich grape grow 
For miles, as far as eyes can go: 
Thou hast not seen a summer's...Read more of this...

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