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Famous Caravan Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...Rivers, tow paths, caravan parks

From Kirkstall to Keighley

The track’s ribbon flaps

Like Margaret’s whirling and twirling

At ten with her pink-tied hair

And blue-check patterned frock

O my lost beloved



Mills fall like doomed fortresses

Their domes topple, stopped clocks

Chime midnight forever and ever

Amen to the lost hegemony of mill girls

Flocking through dawn ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...s her burning sands; than stream long sought 
Through desert flowing and the scorched plain 
To Sheba's troop or Tema's caravan. 


Egypt beholds the dawn of this fair morn 
And boasts her rites mysterious no more; 
Her hidden learning wrapt in symbols strange 
Of hieroglyphic character, engrav'd 
On marble pillar, or the mountain rock, 
Or pyramid enduring many an age. 
She now receives asserted and explain'd 
That holy law, which on mount Sinai writ 
By God's own finger, an...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...IO. 
And from the earliest times advent'rous man 
On foreign traffic stretch'd the nimble sail; 
Or sent the slow pac'd caravan afar 
O'er barren wastes, eternal sands where not 
The blissful haunt of human form is seen 
Nor tree not ev'n funeral cypress sad 
Nor bubbling fountain. Thus arriv'd of old 
Golconda's golden ore, and thus the wealth 
Of Ophir to the wisest of mankind. 



LEANDER. 
Great is the praise of commerce, and the men 
Deserve our praise who spread from sh...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...grave white-turbaned merchants go:

And on from thence to Ispahan,
The gilded garden of the sun,
Whence the long dusty caravan
Brings cedar wood and vermilion;

And that dread city of Cabool
Set at the mountain's scarped feet,
Whose marble tanks are ever full
With water for the noonday heat:

Where through the narrow straight Bazaar
A little maid Circassian
Is led, a present from the Czar
Unto some old and bearded khan, -

Here have our wild war-eagles flown,
And flapped wid...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...The strands of a wire mesh fence

Straddling the cobbles of a street

That is no more, a washing line

And an abandoned caravan.



39



‘This open land to let’

Is what you get on the Hollows

Thousands of half-burned tyres

The rusty barrel of a Trumix lorry

Concrete slabs, foxgloves and condoms,

The Go-Kart Arena’s signboards,

Half the wall of Ellerby Lane School.





40



There is a mermaid singing

On East Street on an IBM poster

Her hair is lack-lustre

Her breas...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...st)

And then each pigeon spread its milky van,
The bright car soared into the dawning sky,
And like a cloud the aerial caravan
Passed over the AEgean silently,
Till the faint air was troubled with the song
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.

But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where the wide stair of orbed marble dips
Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul
Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
And passed into the void, a...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.   - Rumi Homepage    ...Read more of this...
by Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
...egion, part more wise 
In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way, 
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth 
Their aery caravan, high over seas 
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing 
Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane 
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air 
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: 
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song 
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings 
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale 
...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...spake:— 
 "Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place,
So far from path or road of men, who pass
In troop or caravan? for single none
Durst ever, who returned, and dropt not here
His carcass, pined with hunger and with droughth.
I ask the rather, and the more admire,
For that to me thou seem'st the man whom late
Our new baptizing Prophet at the ford
Of Jordan honoured so, and called thee Son
Of God. I saw and heard, for we sometimes 
Who dwell this wild, constraine...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ngest snake on earth ends at thirty-odd feet.
Same goes for fairy tale snakes, though they make it a little longer.
The caravan of digits that is pi
does not stop at the edge of the page,
but runs off the table and into the air,
over the wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, the clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bloatedness and bottomlessness.
Oh how short, all but mouse-like is the comet's tail!
How frail is a ray of starlight, bending in any old space!
Meanwhile two thr...Read more of this...
by Szymborska, Wislawa
...irst them too, and make them pale.
Whether, through whirling sand,
A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
In the wall'd cities the way passes through,
Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs,
On some great river's marge,
Mown them down, far from home.
They see the Heroes
Near harbour;--but they share
Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,
Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;
Or where the echoing oars
Of Argo first
Startled the unknown s...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...side 
By those who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 75 
His chamber in the silent halls of death  
Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night  
Scourged to his dungeon but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 80 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams. ...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen
...ain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again. 

XVIII.
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two and went his way. 

XIX.
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter -- the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep. 

XX.
I sometimes think that never ...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar
...ke Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turned
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

16

Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.

17

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

18

I sometimes think that never blows so...Read more of this...
by Fitzgerald, Edward
...o, and make them pale.
247 Whether, through whirling sand,
248 A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
249 Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
250 In the wall'd cities the way passes through,
251 Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs,
252 On some great river's marge,
253 Mown them down, far from home. 

254 They see the Heroes
255 Near harbour;--but they share
256 Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,
257 Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;
258 Or where the echoing oar...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...such matters, but to mind our cue — 
Which is to act as we are bid to do.' 

XXIII 

While thus they spake, the angelic caravan, 
Arriving like a rush of mighty wind, 
Cleaving the fields of space, as doth the swan 
Some silver stream (say Ganges, Nile, or Inde, 
Or Thames, or Tweed), and 'midst them an old man 
With an old soul, and both extremely blind, 
Halted before the gate, and in his shroud 
Seated their fellow traveller on a cloud. 

XXIV 

But bringing up the rear of...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...,
The little Captain innocent
Took the eye with him as he went,
Each village senior paused to scan
And speak the lovely caravan.

From the window I look out
To mark thy beautiful parade
Stately marching in cap and coat
To some tune by fairies played;
A music heard by thee alone
To works as noble led thee on.
Now love and pride, alas, in vain,
Up and down their glances strain.
The painted sled stands where it stood,
The kennel by the corded wood,
The gathered sticks to stanch ...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...he little captain innocent 
Took the eye with him as he went; 
Each village senior paused to scan 
And speak the lovely caravan. 
From the window I look out 
To mark thy beautiful parade, 
Stately marching in cap and coat 
To same tune by fairies played;-- 
A music heard by thee alone 
To works as noble led thee on. 

Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain, 
Up and down their glances strain. 
The painted sled stands where it stood; 
The kennel by the corded wood; 
His gathered sti...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...t
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and...Read more of this...
by Crane, Hart
...se, 
And when kindly falls the night, 
In all the town no spark of light. 
There I'll come when I'm a man 
With a camel caravan; 
Light a fire in the gloom 
Of some dusty dining-room; 
See the pictures on the walls, 
Heroes fights and festivals; 
And in a corner find the toys 
Of the old Egyptian boys....Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry