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Best Famous On The Road Again Poems

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Written by John Masefield | Create an image from this poem

The Seekers

 FRIENDS and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blessed abode, 
But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road. 

Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind, 
For we go seeking a city that we shall never find. 

There is no solace on earth for us--for such as we-- 
Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see. 

Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain, 
And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again. 

We seek the City of God, and the haunt where beauty dwells, 
And we find the noisy mart and the sound of burial bells. 

Never the golden city, where radiant people meet, 
But the dolorous town where mourners are going about the street. 

We travel the dusty road till the light of the day is dim, 
And sunset shows us spires away on the world's rim. 

We travel from dawn to dusk, till the day is past and by, 
Seeking the Holy City beyond the rim of the sky. 

Friends and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blest abode, 
But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road.


Written by Eamon Grennan | Create an image from this poem

One Morning

 Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter
rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage
valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes
came echoing through the rocky cove
where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay
and a heron rose off a boulder where he'd been invisible,
drifted a little, stood again -- a hieroglyph
or just longevity reflecting on itself
between the sky clouding over and the lightly ruffled water.

This was the morning after your dream of dying, of being held
and told it didn't matter. A butterfly went jinking over
the wave-silky stones, and where I turned
to go up the road again, a couple in a blue camper sat
smoking their cigarettes over their breakfast coffee (blue
scent of smoke, the thick dark smell of fresh coffee)
and talking in quiet voices, first one then the other answering,
their radio telling the daily news behind them. It was warm.
All seemed at peace. I could feel the sun coming off the water.
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

To Brenda Williams ‘writing Against The Grain'

 It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets

Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail

Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,

Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool

Of midnight light, your cats stretched flat on your desk top’s scatter

Under the laughing eyes of Sexton and Lowell beneath Rollie McKenna’s seamless shutter.



Other nights you hunch in your rocking chair, spilling rhythms

Silently as a bat weaves through midnight’s jade waves

Your sibylline tongue tapping every twist or the syllable count

Deftly as Whistler mixed tints for Nocturnes’ nuances or shade

Or Hokusai tipped every wave crest.



You pause when down the hall a cat snatches at a forbidden plant,

“Schubert, Schubert”, you whisper urgently for it is night and there are neighbours.

The whistle of the forgotten kettle shrills: you turn down the gas

And scurry back to your poem as you would to a sick child

And ease the pain of disordered lines.

The face of your mother smiles like a Madonna bereft

And the faces of our children are always somewhere

As you focus your midnight eyes soft with tears.



You create to survive, a Balzac writing against the clock

A Baudelaire writing against the bailiff’s knock

A Val?ry in the throes of ‘Narcisse Parle’.



When a far clock chimes you sigh and set aside the page:

There is no telephone to ring or call: I am distant and sick,

Frail as an old stick

Our spirits rise and fall like the barometer’s needle

Jerk at a finger tapping on glass

Flashbacks or inspiration cry out at memory loss.

You peer through a magnifying glass at the typeface

Your knuckles white with pain as the sonnet starts to strain

Like a child coming to birth, the third you never bore.



All births, all babies, all poems are the same in coming

The spark of inspiration or spurt of semen,

The silent months of gestation, the waiting and worrying

Until the final agony of creation: for our first son’s

Birth at Oakes we had only a drawer for a crib.

Memories blur: all I know is that it was night

And at home as you always insisted, against all advice

But mine. I remember feebly holding the mask in place

As the Indian woman doctor brutally stitched you without an anaesthetic

And the silence like no other when even the midwives

Had left: the child slept and we crept round his make-shift cradle.



At Brudenell Road again it was night in the cold house

With bare walls and plug-in fires: Bob, the real father

Paced the front, deep in symphonic thought:

Isaiah slept: I waited and watched - an undiagnosed breech

The doctor’s last minute discovery - made us rush

And scatter to have you admitted.



I fell asleep in the silent house and woke to a chaos

Of blood and towels and discarded dressings and a bemused five year old.

We brought you armsful of daffodils, Easter’s remainders.

“Happy Easter, are the father?” Staff beamed

As we sat by the bedside, Bob, myself and John MacKendrick,

Brecht and Rilke’s best translator

Soon to die by his own hand.

Poetry is born in the breech position

Poems beget poems.
Written by John Masefield | Create an image from this poem

A Creed

 I HOLD that when a person dies 
His soul returns again to earth; 
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise 
Another mother gives him birth. 
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain 
The old soul takes the road again. 

Such is my own belief and trust; 
This hand, this hand that holds the pen, 
Has many a hundred times been dust 
And turned, as dust, to dust again; 
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown 
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon. 

All that I rightly think or do, 
Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast, 
Is curse or blessing justly due 
For sloth or effort in the past. 
My life's a statement of the sum 
Of vice indulged, or overcome. 

I know that in my lives to be 
My sorry heart will ache and burn, 
And worship, unavailingly, 
The woman whom I used to spurn, 
And shake to see another have 
The love I spurned, the love she gave. 

And I shall know, in angry words, 
In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear, 
A carrion flock of homing-birds, 
The gibes and scorns I uttered here. 
The brave word that I failed to speak 
Will brand me dastard on the cheek. 

And as I wander on the roads 
I shall be helped and healed and blessed; 
Dear words shall cheer and be as goads 
To urge to heights before unguessed. 
My road shall be the road I made; 
All that I gave shall be repaid. 

So shall I fight, so shall I tread, 
In this long war beneath the stars; 
So shall a glory wreathe my head, 
So shall I faint and show the scars, 
Until this case, this clogging mould, 
Be smithied all to kingly gold.
Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

A Working Party

 Three hours ago he blundered up the trench, 
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots; 
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls 
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk. 
He couldn't see the man who walked in front; 
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet 
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing 
Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt `Keep to your right -- make way!' 
When squeezing past some men from the front-line: 
White faces peered, puffing a point of red; 
Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks 
And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom 
Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore 
Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread 
And flickered upward, showing nimble rats 
And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain; 
Then the slow silver moment died in dark. 
The wind came posting by with chilly gusts 
And buffeting at the corners, piping thin. 
And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots 
Would split and crack and sing along the night, 
And shells came calmly through the drizzling air 
To burst with hollow bang below the hill.

Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench; 
Now he will never walk that road again: 
He must be carried back, a jolting lump 
Beyond all needs of tenderness and care.

He was a young man with a meagre wife 
And two small children in a Midland town, 
He showed their photographs to all his mates, 
And they considered him a decent chap 
Who did his work and hadn't much to say, 
And always laughed at other people's jokes 
Because he hadn't any of his own.

That night when he was busy at his job 
Of piling bags along the parapet, 
He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet 
And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold. 
He thought of getting back by half-past twelve, 
And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep 
In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes 
Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.

He pushed another bag along the top, 
Craning his body outward; then a flare 
Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire; 
And as he dropped his head the instant split 
His startled life with lead, and all went out.


Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

Saltbush Bill on the Patriarchs

 Come all you little rouseabouts and climb upon my knee; 
To-day, you see, is Christmas Day, and so it’s up to me 
To give you some instruction like—a kind of Christmas tale— 
So name your yarn, and off she goes. What, “Jonah and the Whale”? 
Well, whales is sheep I’ve never shore; I’ve never been to sea, 
So all them great Leviathans is mysteries to me; 
But there’s a tale the Bible tells I fully understand, 
About the time the Patriarchs were settling on the land. 

Those Patriarchs of olden time, when all is said and done, 
They lived the same as far-out men on many a Queensland run— 
A lot of roving, droving men who drifted to and fro, 
The same we did out Queensland way a score of years ago. 

Now Isaac was a squatter man, and Jacob was his son, 
And when the boy grew up, you see, he wearied of the run. 
You know the way that boys grow up—there’s some that stick at home; 
But any boy that’s worth his salt will roll his swag and roam. 

So Jacob caught the roving fit and took the drovers’ track 
To where his uncle had a run, beyond the outer back; 
You see they made for out-back runs for room to stretch and grow, 
The same we did out Queensland way a score of years ago. 

Now, Jacob knew the ways of stock—that’s most uncommon clear— 
For when he got to Laban’s Run, they made him overseer; 
He didn’t ask a pound a week, but bargained for his pay 
To take the roan and strawberry calves—the same we’d take to-day. 

The duns and blacks and “Goulburn roans” (that’s brindles), coarse and hard, 
He branded them with Laban’s brand, in Old Man Laban’s yard; 
So, when he’d done the station work for close on seven year, 
Why, all the choicest stock belonged to Laban’s overseer. 

It’s often so with overseers—I’ve seen the same thing done 
By many a Queensland overseer on many a Queensland run. 
But when the mustering time came on old Laban acted straight, 
And gave him country of his own outside the boundary gate. 

He gave him stock, and offered him his daughter’s hand in troth; 
And Jacob first he married one, and then he married both; 
You see, they weren’t particular about a wife or so— 
No more were we up Queensland way a score of years ago. 

But when the stock were strong and fat with grass and lots of rain, 
Then Jacob felt the call to take the homeward road again. 
It’s strange in every creed and clime, no matter where you roam, 
There comes a day when every man would like to make for home. 

So off he set with sheep and goats, a mighty moving band, 
To battle down the homeward track along the Overland— 
It’s droving mixed-up mobs like that that makes men cut their throats. 
I’ve travelled rams, which Lord forget, but never travelled goats. 

But Jacob knew the ways of stock, for (so the story goes) 
When battling through the Philistines—selectors, I suppose— 
He thought he’d have to fight his way, an awkward sort of job; 
So what did Old Man Jacob do? of course, he split the mob. 

He sent the strong stock on ahead to battle out the way; 
He couldn’t hurry lambing ewes—no more you could to-day— 
And down the road, from run to run, his hand ’gainst every hand, 
He moved that mighty mob of stock across the Overland. 

The thing is made so clear and plain, so solid in and out, 
There isn’t any room at all for any kind of doubt. 
It’s just a plain straightforward tale—a tale that lets you know 
The way they lived in Palestine three thousand years ago. 

It’s strange to read it all to-day, the shifting of the stock; 
You’d think you see the caravans that loaf behind the flock, 
The little donkeys and the mules, the sheep that slowly spread, 
And maybe Dan or Naphthali a-ridin’ on ahead. 

The long, dry, dusty summer days, the smouldering fires at night; 
The stir and bustle of the camp at break of morning light; 
The little kids that skipped about, the camels’ dead-slow tramp— 
I wish I’d done a week or two in Old Man Jacob’s camp! 

But if I keep the narrer path, some day, perhaps, I’ll know 
How Jacob bred them strawberry calves three thousand years ago.
Written by Sir Henry Newbolt | Create an image from this poem

The Toy Band

 A Song of the Great Retreat

Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town, 
Lights out and never a glint o' moon: 
Weary lay the stragglers, half a thousand down, 
Sad sighed the weary big Dragoon. 
"Oh! if I'd a drum here to make them take the road again, 
Oh! if I'd a fife to wheedle, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again, 
Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum! 

"Hey, but here's a toy shop, here's a drum for me, 
Penny whistles too to play the tune! 
Half a thousand dead men soon shall hear and see 
We're a band!" said the weary big Dragoon. 
Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake and take the road again, 
Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again, 
Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!" 

Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night, 
Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat; 
Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight 
With a little penny drum to lift their feet. 
Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake, and take the raod again, 
Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again, 
Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum! 

As long as there's an Englishman to ask a tale of me, 
As long as I can tell the tale aright, 
We'll not forget the penny whistle's wheedle-deedle-dee 
And the big Dragoon a-beating down the night, 
Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake and take the road again, 
Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again, 
Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife, and drum!
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The Gipsy Trail

 The white moth to the closing bine,
 The bee to the opened clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
 Ever the wide world over.

Ever the wide world over, lass,
 Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
 And back at the last to you.

Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
 Out of the grime and the gray
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
 Gipsy, come away!

The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp
 The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
 By the tie of a roving breed.

The pied snake to the rifted rock,
 The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
 And both to the road again.

Both to the road again, again!
 Out on a clean sea-track --
Follow the cross of the gipsy trail
 Over the world and back!

Follow the Romany patteran
 North where the blue bergs sail,
And the bows are grey with the frozen spray,
 And the masts are shod with mail.

Follow the Romany patteran
 Sheer to the Austral Light,
Where the besom of God is the wild South wind,
 Sweeping the sea-floors white.

Follow the Romany patteran
 West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift.
 And the east and west are one.

Follow the Romany patteran
 East where the silence broods
By a purple wave on an opal beach
 In the hush of the Mahim woods.

"The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
 The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
 As it was in the days of old."

The heart of a man to the heart of a maid --
 Light of my tents, be fleet.
Morning waits at the end of the world,
 And the world is all at our feet!
Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

The Working Party

 Three hours ago he blundered up the trench, 
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots; 
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls 
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk. 
He couldn't see the man who walked in front; 
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet 
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing 
Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt `Keep to your right -- make way!' 
When squeezing past some men from the front-line: 
White faces peered, puffing a point of red; 
Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks 
And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom 
Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore 
Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread 
And flickered upward, showing nimble rats 
And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain; 
Then the slow silver moment died in dark. 
The wind came posting by with chilly gusts 
And buffeting at the corners, piping thin. 
And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots 
Would split and crack and sing along the night, 
And shells came calmly through the drizzling air 
To burst with hollow bang below the hill.

Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench; 
Now he will never walk that road again: 
He must be carried back, a jolting lump 
Beyond all needs of tenderness and care.

He was a young man with a meagre wife 
And two small children in a Midland town, 
He showed their photographs to all his mates, 
And they considered him a decent chap 
Who did his work and hadn't much to say, 
And always laughed at other people's jokes 
Because he hadn't any of his own.

That night when he was busy at his job 
Of piling bags along the parapet, 
He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet 
And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold. 
He thought of getting back by half-past twelve, 
And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep 
In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes 
Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.

He pushed another bag along the top, 
Craning his body outward; then a flare 
Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire; 
And as he dropped his head the instant split 
His startled life with lead, and all went out.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

The Long Race

 Up the old hill to the old house again 
Where fifty years ago the friend was young 
Who should be waiting somewhere there among 
Old things that least remembered most remain, 
He toiled on with a pleasure that was pain
To think how soon asunder would be flung 
The curtain half a century had hung 
Between the two ambitions they had slain. 

They dredged an hour for words, and then were done. 
“Good-bye!… You have the same old weather-vane— 
Your little horse that’s always on the run.” 
And all the way down back to the next train, 
Down the old hill to the old road again, 
It seemed as if the little horse had won.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry