Famous Bourne Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Trail Of No Return

by Robert William Service
 So now I take a bitter road
 Whereon no bourne I see,
And wearily I lift the load
 That once I bore with glee.
For me no more by sea or shore
 Adventure's star shall burn,
As I forsake wild ways to take
 The Trail of No Return.

Such paths of peril I have trod:
 In sun and shade they lay.
And some went...Read more of this...

That Day

by Anne Sexton
 This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
with its shoulders gathered in like a Greek chorus,
with its tongue like a king making up rules as he goes,
with its tongue quite openly like a cat lapping...Read more of this...

The To-Be-Forgotten

by Thomas Hardy
 I
I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are you distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest?"

II
--"O not at being here;
But that our future second death is near;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
And blank oblivion comes!

III
"These, our sped ancestry,
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs...Read more of this...

Echo Dell

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 In a lone valley fair and far,
Where many sweet beguilements are,
I know a spot to lag and dream
Through damask morns and noons agleam;
For feet fall lightly on the fern
And twilight is a wondrous thing,
When the winds blow from some far bourne
Beyond the hill rims westering;
There echoes ring as if a throng
Of fairies hid from mortal eyes
Sent laughter back in...Read more of this...

Song Of The Spirit

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Too sweet and too subtle for pen or for tongue
In phrases unwritten and measures unsung, 
As deep and as strange as the sounds of the sea, 
Is the song that my spirit is singing to me.

In the midnight and tempest when forest trees shiver, 
In the roar of the surf, and the rush of the river, 
In the rustle...Read more of this...

Mountains

by Henry Kendall
RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines, 
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines; 
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare 
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air; 
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud, 
Where the fading twilight lingers, when...Read more of this...

In The Days When The World Was Wide

by Henry Lawson
 The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull and slow, 
For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the wanderers go; 
Greater, or smaller, the same old things we see by the dull road-side -- 
And tired of all is the spirit that sings 
of the days when the world was...Read more of this...

Canzone XVI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 124] CANZONE XVI. Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno. TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE.  O my own Italy! though words are vainThe mortal wounds to close,Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,Yet may it soothe my painTo sigh forth Tyber's woes,Read more of this...

Sonnet CIV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CIV. Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra. LOVE'S INCONSISTENCY.  I fynde no peace and all my warre is done,I feare and hope, I bourne and freese lyke yse;I flye above the wynde, yet cannot ryse;And nought I have, yet all the worlde I season,That looseth, nor lacketh,...Read more of this...

Harbor Moonrise

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 There is never a wind to sing o'er the sea 
On its dimpled bosom that holdeth in fee 
Wealth of silver and magicry; 
And the harbor is like to an ebon cup 
With mother-o'-pearl to the lips lined up, 
And brimmed with the wine of entranced delight, 
Purple and rare, from the flagon of night. 

Lo, in the east...Read more of this...

A Farewell

by Charles Kingsley
 With all my will, but much against my heart, 
We two now part. 
My Very Dear, 
Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear. 
It needs no art,
With faint, averted feet 
And many a tear, 
In our opposèd paths to persevere. 
Go thou to East, I West. 
We will not say 
There 's any hope, it is so...Read more of this...

Love And Madness

by Thomas Campbell
 Hark ! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour !
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep !

"Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried)
To probe the bosom too severely tried !
Oh ! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the...Read more of this...

Crossing the Bar

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that the dark!...Read more of this...

Bourne

by Judith Skillman
 When the Cherry
rustles above her head
she hardly realizes
why she leaves
her clothes on the rocks,

passes a hand absently
through water
as if smoothing
an infant’s forehead.
Instead she takes the fruit

pressed into her hand
and watches the bloody stone
wet her fingers.
Wasn’t sweetness always 
a symbol for their falling.

She walks with the man
along the river bank
until they come to know
the sore places
in the soles of their...Read more of this...

Off to the Fishing Ground

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 There's a piping wind from a sunrise shore
Blowing over a silver sea,
There's a joyous voice in the lapsing tide
That calls enticingly;
The mist of dawn has taken flight
To the dim horizon's bound,
And with wide sails set and eager hearts 
We're off to the fishing ground. 

Ho, comrades mine, how that brave wind sings
Like a great sea-harp afar!
We whistle its wild...Read more of this...

The Chinese Nightingale

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Song in Chinese Tapestries


"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you...Read more of this...

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