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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Waiting

by Robert Frost
 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 the opposing lights of...Read more of this...

Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)

by Thomas Hardy
 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...Read more of this...

The Vagabond

by Henry Lawson
 Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river -
There's the life for a man like me,
There's the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth...Read more of this...

The Merry Guide

by A E Housman
 Once in the wind of morning
 I ranged the thymy wold;
The world-wide air was azure
 And all the brooks ran gold.

There through the dews beside me
 Behold a youth that trod,
With feathered cap on forehead,
 And poised a golden rod.

With mien to match the morning
 And gay delightful guise
And friendly brows and laughter
 He looked me in the eyes.

Oh...Read more of this...

When Smoke Stood Up From Ludlow

by A E Housman
 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...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin

by Robert William Service
 I

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame,
When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name;
Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam when the brown spring freshets flow;
Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow;
They knew...Read more of this...

Do You Remember Once . .

by Alan Seeger
 Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, 
The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays 
And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places, 
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais? 


The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters 
Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned. 
Out of the starry...Read more of this...

Christmas in India

by Rudyard Kipling
 Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
 As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
 That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
 Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
 Oh the clammy fog that hovers
 And...Read more of this...

Perch-Fishing

by Edmund Blunden
On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew
And sunlight blurred below; but sultry blue
Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards
Behind the miller'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...Read more of this...

March

by A E Housman
 The Sun at noon to higher air, 
Unharnessing the silver Pair 
That late before his chariot swam, 
Rides on the gold wool of the Ram. 

So braver notes the storm-cock sings 
To start the rusted wheel of things, 
And brutes in field and brutes in pen 
Leap that the world goes round again. 

The boys are up the woods...Read more of this...

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

by Thomas Gray
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder...Read more of this...

The Vagabonds

by Bliss Carman
 We are the vagabonds of time, 
And rove the yellow autumn days, 
When all the roads are gray with rime 
And all the valleys blue with haze. 
We came unlooked for as the 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,...Read more of this...

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