Famous Withdrawing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Child of Europe

...ur own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this pla...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw


Dover Beach

...ull, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for ...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

For the Young Who Want To

...get a job. 

Genius is what they know you 
had after the third volume 
of remarkable poems. Earlier 
they accuse you of withdrawing, 
ask why you don't have a baby, 
call you a bum. 

The reason people want M.F.A.'s, 
take workshops with fancy names 
when all you can really 
learn is a few techniques, 
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms 

is that every artist lacks 
a license to hang on the wall 
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadis...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

Harlan Sewall

...it was I repaid
Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
First with diminished thanks,
Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,
So that I might not be compelled to thank you,
And then with silence which followed upon
Our final Separation.
You had cured my diseased soul. But to cure it
You saw my disease, you knew my secret,
And that is why I fled from you.
For though when our bodies rise from pain
We kiss forever the watchful hands
That gave us wormw...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Hymn on Solitude

..., you assume
The gentle-looking Hertford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she,
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long withdrawing vale,
Awakes the rival'd nightingale. 

Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
And while meridian fervours beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
But chief, when evening scenes decay,
And the faint landskip swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine. 

Descending angels ble...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James


Romance Moderne

...! Sighs—! 
It's the fillip of novelty. It's— 

Mountains. Elephants humping along
against the sky—indifferent to 
light withdrawing its tattered shreds, 
worn out with embraces. It's 
the fillip of novelty. It's a fire in the blood. 

Oh get a flannel shirt], white flannel 
or pongee. You'd look so well! 
I married you because I liked your nose.
I wanted you! I wanted you 
in spite of all they'd say— 

Rain and light, mountain and rain,
rain and river. Will you love me always...Read more of this...
by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)

Snake

...as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in un...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Song of the Redwood-Tree

...Redwood-tree—as of wood-spirits’ voices ecstatic, ancient and
 rustling, 
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing, 
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving, 
From the Cascade range to the Wasatch—or Idaho far, or Utah, 
To the deities of the Modern henceforth yielding,
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity—the settlements, features all, 
In the Mendocino woods I caught. 

5
The flashing and golden pageant of California! 
The s...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Spontaneous Me

...privileged feelers may be
 intimate where they are,
The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body—the bashful withdrawing of
 flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves, 
The limpid liquid within the young man, 
The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful, 
The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest, 
The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty

...l Self.”


The boat of crystal touched the shore,
Then melted flamelike from our eyes,
As in the twilight drops the sun
Withdrawing rays of paradise.


We hurried under archéd aisles
That far above in heaven withdrawn
With cloudy pillars stormed the night,
Rich as the opal shafts of dawn.


I would have lingered then—but he:
“Oh, let us haste: the dream grows dim,
Another night, another day,
A thousand years will part from him,
Who is that Ancient One divine
From whom our pha...Read more of this...
by Russell, George William

The Generations of Men

...A little longer. I mustn't feel too hurried, 
Or I can't give myself to hear the voices." 
"Is this some trance you are withdrawing into?" 
"You must be very still; you mustn't talk." 
"I'll hardly breathe." 
"The voices seem to say----" 
"I'm waiting." 
"Don't! The voices seem to say: 
Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid 
Of an acquaintance made adventurously." 
"I let you say that--on consideration." 
"I don't see very well how you can help it. 
You want the truth. I speak but ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence

...moment I could believe in no change,
The mast perpetually
Vacillating between the same constellations,
The night never withdrawing its dark virtue
>From the harbor shaped as a heart,
The sea pulsing as a heart,
The sky vaulted as a heart,
Where I know the light will shatter like a cry
Above a discovery:
"Emptiness.
Emptiness! Look!"
Look. This is the morning....Read more of this...
by Merwin, W S

Upon Appleton House to My Lord Fairfax

...nd,
Short Pyramids of Hay do stand.
And such the Roman Camps do rise
In Hills for Soldiers Obsequies.

This Scene again withdrawing brings
A new and empty Face of things;
A levell'd space, as smooth and plain,
As Clothes for Lilly strecht to stain.
The World when first created sure
Was such a Table rase and pure.
Or rather such is the Toril
Ere the Bulls enter at Madril.

For to this naked equal Flat,
Which Levellers take Pattern at,
The Villagers in common chase
Their Cattle...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

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