Famous Afield Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Charmides

...ow house-dog bayed
As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed.

And when the light-foot mower went afield
Across the meadows laced with threaded dew,
And the sheep bleated on the misty weald,
And from its nest the waking corncrake flew,
Some woodmen saw him lying by the stream
And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem,

Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said,
'It is young Hylas, that false runaway
Who with a Naiad now would make his be...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Christmas in India

...ve India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring --
 As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
 To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
 Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly --
 Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
 With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
 And to-day we bid "good Christian men r...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Do You Remember Once . .

...e door so near unsealed, 
Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers, 
For that one flower that bloomed too far afield. 


If I have wept, it was because, forsaken, 
I felt perhaps more poignantly than some 
The blank eternity from which we waken 
And all the blank eternity to come. 


And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender 
(In the regret with which my lip was curled) 
Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor 
My transit through the beauty of the world....Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

...the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of g...Read more of this...
by Gray, Thomas

Jubilate Agno: Fragment C

...t they will respect decency in all points. 

For they will do it in conceit, word, and motion. 

For they will go forth afield. 

For the Devil can work upon stagnating filth to a very great degree. 

For I prophecy that we shall have our horns again. 

For in the day of David Men as yet had a glorious horn upon his forehead. 

For this horn was a bright substance in colour and consistence as the nail of the hand. 

For it was broad, thick and strong so as to serve for defenc...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher


March

...woods with day 
To fetch the daffodils away, 
And home at noonday from the hills 
They bring no dearth of daffodils. 

Afield for palms the girls repair, 
And sure enough the palms are there, 
And each will find by hedge or pond 
Her waving silver-tufted wand. 

In farm and field through all the shire 
The eye beholds the heart's desire; 
Ah, let not only mine be vain, 
For lovers should be loved again....Read more of this...
by Housman, A E

Perch-Fishing

...r's elmen floodgate boards,
And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed
In the vole's empty house, still drove afield
To plunder touchwood from old crippled trees
And build their young ones their hutched nurseries;
Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison
Nor had the whisper through the tansies run
Nor weather-wisest bird gone home.
             How then
Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken
Lightning coming? troubled up they stole
To the deep-sh...Read more of this...
by Blunden, Edmund

Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)

...Somewhere afield here something lies 
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust 
That moved a poet to prophecies - 
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust 

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, 
And made immortal through times to be; - 
Though it only lived like another bird, 
And knew not its immortality. 

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell - 
A little ball of feather...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Sohrab and Rustum

...le Persians Rustum came. 

And Rustum to the Persian front advanced,
And Sohrab arm'd in Haman's tent, and came.
And as afield the reapers cut a swath
Down through the middle of a rich man's corn,
And on each side are squares of standing corn,
And in the midst a stubble, short and bare--
So on each side were squares of men, with spears
Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand.
And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast
His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw
Sohrab come fort...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin

...and black as the core of the Pit.
By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I would capture it;
By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and would not quit.

"For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it seemed to fleer at me;
I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light, hearing its evil glee;
Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its shadow would I see.

"It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had poisoned to excess;
Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead ('...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...d him,
And Lust put violets on his shameless front,
And all minced forth o' the street like holiday folk
That sally off afield on Summer morns.
-- Once certain hounds that knew of many a chase,
And bare great wounds of antler and of tusk
That they had ta'en to give a lord some sport,
-- Good hounds, that would have died to give lords sport --
Were so bewrayed and kicked by these same lords
That all the pack turned tooth o' the knights and bit
As knights had been no better thi...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Merry Guide

...kened stride
And smiles and nothing spoken
 Led on my merry guide.

By blowing realms of woodland
 With sunstruck vanes afield
And cloud-led shadows sailing
 About the windy weald,

By valley-guarded granges
 And silver waters wide,
Content at heart I followed
 With my delightful guide.

And like the cloudy shadows
 Across the country blown
We two fare on for ever,
 But not we two alone.

With the great gale we journey
 That breathes from gardens thinned,
Borne in the drift o...Read more of this...
by Housman, A E

The Vagabond

...nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.

Or let autumn fall on me
Where afield I linger,
Silencing the bird on tree,
Biting the blue finger.
White as meal the frosty field -
Warm the fireside haven -
Not to autumn will I yield,
Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, t...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

The Vagabonds

...wind 
Trooping across the April hills, 
When the brown waking earth had dreams 
Of summer in the Wander Kills. 
How far afield we joyed to fare, 
With June in every blade and tree! 
Now with the sea-wind in our hair 
We turn our faces to the sea. 

We go unheeded as the stream 
That wanders by the hill-wood side, 
Till the great marshes take his hand 
And lead him to the roving tide. 

The roving tide, the sleeping hills, 
These are the borders of that zone 
Where they may fa...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss

Waiting

...Afield at dusk

What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

When Smoke Stood Up From Ludlow

...When smoke stood up from Ludlow, 
And mist blew off from Teme, 
And blithe afield to ploughing 
Against the morning beam 
I strode beside my team, 

The blackbird in the coppice 
Looked out to see me stride, 
And hearkened as I whistled 
The trampling team beside, 
And fluted and replied: 

"Lie down, lie down, young yeoman; 
What use to rise and rise? 
Rise man a thousand mornings 
Yet down at last he lies, 
And then the man is wi...Read more of this...
by Housman, A E

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