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Famous Vacation Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...rs Ends; 
For new Events was still providing; 
Yet now desirous to be riding, 
He pack'd-up ev'ry Ode and Ditty 
And in Vacation left the City; 
So rapt with Figures, and Allusions, 
With secret Passions, sweet Confusions; 
With Sentences from Plays well-known, 
And thousand Couplets of his own; 
That ev'n the chalky Road look'd gay, 
And seem'd to him the Milky Way. 
But Fortune, who the Ball is tossing, 
And Poets ever will be crossing, 
Misled the Steed, which ill he g...Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...Always Mine!
No more Vacation!
Term of Light this Day begun!
Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects --
Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...en life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm
Too long vacation hastned on his term.
Meerly to drive the time away he sickn'd,
Fainted, and died, nor would with Ale be quickn'd;
Nay, quoth he, on his swooning bed out-stretch'd,
If I may not carry, sure Ile ne're be fetch'd,
But vow though the cross Doctors all stood hearers,
For one Carrier put down to make six bearers. 
Ease was his chief disease, and t...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,
Driving dum silence from the portal dore,
Where he had mutely sate two years before:
Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Smal...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
..., a tangram emerges: a country."
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: "How 
pleasant
To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she 
scratched
Her cleft chin's solitary hair. She remembered spinach

And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach.
"M'love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out 
in thunder
Today, and it shall be as you wish." He scratched
The part of his head under his hat. The apartment
Seemed to grow smal...Read more of this...



by Berry, Wendell
...Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head. 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer. 

When they want you to buy something 
they will call you. When th...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...s'd the mid-way line,
And driving at his usual rate,
Lash'd on his downward car of state.
And now expired the short vacation,
And dinner o'er in epic fashion,
While all the crew, beneath the trees,
Eat pocket-pies, or bread and cheese,
(Nor shall we, like old Homer, care
To versify their bill of fare)
Each active party, feasted well,
Throng'd in, like sheep, at sound of bell;
With equal spirit took their places,
And meeting oped with three Oh Yesses:
When first, the darin...Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...The Jumbo Jet has barely shuddered off
The ground, and I'm depressed. My scuba mask
And fins, my fly rod and beach hat

Crush each other in an overhead locker
Dark as the bedroom closet they're returning to.
Already the week's good times melt

Together like caramels in a hot car.
My vow to "Do this more often!" recedes
With the jade palms and s...Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...ncing "Go away;" a flattened seed
from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow.

It's pure potential: a vacation-to-be
the way an apple is a pie-to-be,
a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future

pressed into it inalterably—woven between
the slick fibers like secret threads
from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number

already flashing as cameras grind and the newly-
bereaved moan? Or does it gleam under Arrivals,
digits turned innocuous as those t...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...The Lassitudes of Contemplation
Beget a force
They are the spirit's still vacation
That him refresh --
The Dreams consolidate in action --
What mettle fair...Read more of this...

by Dickey, James
...d rattan the rugs I lay on and read 
On my mother's sewing basket with next winter's socks spilling from it 
The flimsy vacation furniture a bucktoothed picture of myself. 
Payton came back with three men from a filling station and glanced at me 
Dripping water inexplicable then we all grabbed hold like a tug-of-war. 

We were gaining a little from us a cry went up from everywhere 
People came running. Behind us the house filled with men and boys.
On the third...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...e; *jests
And alle these were bound in one volume.
And every night and day was his custume
(When he had leisure and vacation
From other worldly occupation)
To readen in this book of wicked wives.
He knew of them more legends and more lives
Than be of goodde wives in the Bible.
For, trust me well, it is an impossible
That any clerk will speake good of wives,
(*But if* it be of holy saintes' lives) *unless
Nor of none other woman never the mo'.
Who painted the l...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...kindling
Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.

Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens: one wants a vacation
Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice;
Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.

It took three days driving north to find a cloud
The polite skies over Boston couldn't possibly accommodate.
Here on the last frontier of the big, brash spirit

The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles;
The colors assert themselves w...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs