Famous Destination Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Destination poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous destination poems. These examples illustrate what a famous destination poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Walt Whitman
1
AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee.
The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
YET, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also;
Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles!
Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o’erweening, mocking voice,
Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant only, continues onward.
2
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,
The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm’d, uncertain,
The Sea I am quickly...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
NOT the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back, and
many
times
baffled;
Not the path-finder, penetrating inland, weary and long,
By deserts parch’d, snows-chill’d, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his
destination,
More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose a free march for These
States,
To be exhilarating music...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
I sit on the tracks,
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants
none. It's been nine months
since I last listened
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.
When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d
alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me --
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while...Read more of this...
by
Odysseus Elytis
Heleni
Translated by Daphne on May 17th, 1995
By the first drop of rain the summer died
The words that had bore those stary nights got wet
All those words that had one sole destination You!
Where will our hands reach now that weather no longer cares for us
Where will our eyes rest now that the distant lines got dispersed in the clouds
Now that...Read more of this...
by
Spike Milligan
I cannot
and I will not
No, I cannot love you less
Like the flower to the butterfly
The corsage to the dress
She turns my love to dust
my destination empty
my beliefs scattered: Diaspora!
Who set this course - and why?
Now my wings beat -
without purpose
Yet they speed......Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
DESPAIRING cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night,
The sad voice of Death—the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed,
uncertain,
This sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,
Come tell me where I am speeding—tell me my destination.
2
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear, behold—the sad mouth, the look...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley.
Swimming along -
Swimming along -
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Now ye gallant Sydney boys, who have left your household joys
To march across the sea in search of glory,
I am very much afraid that you do not love parade,
But the rum parade is quite another story.
For the influenza came and to spoil its little game,
They ordered us to drink a curious mixture;
Though at...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The boys had come back from the races
All silent and down on their luck;
They'd backed 'em, straight out and for places,
But never a winner they's struck.
They lost their good money on Slogan,
And fell most uncommonly flat
When Partner, the pride of the Bogan,
Was beaten by Aristocrat.
And one said, "I move that instanter...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My virtues in Carara stone
Cut carefully you all my scan;
Beneath I lie, a fetid bone,
The marble worth more than the man.
If on my pure tomb they should grave
My vices,--how the folks would grin!
And say with sympathetic wave:
"Like us he was a man of sin."
And somehow he consoled thereby,
Knowing they may, though Hades bent,
When finally they come to die,
Enjoy a...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
'That man has a curious way of holding his head.'
They pointed me out on the beach; they said 'That man
Will never become as we are, try as he can.'
They pointed me out at the station, and the guard
Looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.
I took the same train that...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
RESPONDEZ! Respondez!
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;)
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade!
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking?
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind!...Read more of this...
by
James Tate
I sit on the tracks,
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants
none. It's been nine months
since I last listened
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.
When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Jennings
Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.
Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
Moored to the same ring:
The hour, the darkness and I,
Our compasses hooded like falcons.
Now the memory of you comes aching in
With a wash of broken bits which never left port
In which once we planned voyages,
They come knocking like hearts asking:
What departures on this tide?
Breath of land, warm breath,
You tighten the cold around the navel,
Though all shores but the first...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me ---
The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
You know the brick path in the back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window,
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk into the woods you come
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of...Read more of this...
by
Ehsan Sehgal
When you love someone, remember that;
neither make "Love" an advertisement nor a chat bot,
take the personal way of honour and manner,
not the public or open way that is just a flirt.
You must know,
The destination of love as a "marriage" in the concept of an angel
The destruction of love as a "date" in the concept of a devil,
The choice is...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or
some northerly harbor of Labrador,
before he became a schoolteacher
a great-uncle painted a big picture.
Receding for miles on either side
into a flushed, still sky
are overhanging pale blue cliffs
hundreds of feet high,
their bases fretted by little arches,
the entrances to caves
running in along the level of a bay
masked by perfect waves.
On the middle of that quiet...Read more of this...
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