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Famous Down The Road Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilde, Oscar
...s
Save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed
For ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres
Came fainter on the wind, as down the road
In joyous dance these country folk did pass,
And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass.

Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,
And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,
And the rose-petals falling from the wreath
As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,
And seemed to be in some entranced swoon
...Read more of this...



by Graves, Robert
...>)


…but I was dead, an hour or more. 
I woke when I’d already passed the door 
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road 
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. 
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in the subterrene sky: 
A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars, 
And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars. 
I felt the vapours of forgetfulness 
Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless
Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake, 
...Read more of this...

by Ammons, A R
...the sunlight has never
heard of trees: surrendered self among
 unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...now. You're crying. Close the door.
The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up?
Amyl There's someone coming down the road!'
'You --oh, you think the talk is all. I must go-
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you --'
'If--you -- do!' She was opening the door wider.
'Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will! --'...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...pty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.


 VII. I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's
 Fullness and of ...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...ing in morning light
-- Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

 *

Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
 to the greyhaired Sheriff's van -- 
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein
 Come back!


III -- Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
 Prisoners, witnesses, Police -- 
the stenographer yawns into her palms.

 August 9, 1978


IV -- Everybody's Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb'd
 dropped lots of...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...An' started to mangle's hard's I could,
The squeakin' was comfortin'.
Well, Ed come home 'bout four.
I seen him down the road,
An' I run out through the shed inter th' barn
To meet him quicker.
I hollered out, `Hullo!'
But he didn't say nothin',
He jest drove right in
An' climbed out o' th' sleigh
An' commenced unharnessin'.
I asked him a heap o' questions;
Who he'd seed
An' what he'd done.
Once in a while he'd nod or shake,
But most o' th' time he didn't ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...,

no matter how hard you tried. There was no crowbar big

enough to do the job.

 Yesterday afternoon we drove down the road from Wells

Summit, then we ran into the sheep. They also were being

moved on the road.

 A shepherd walked in front of the car, a leafy branch in

his hand, sweeping the sheep aside. He looked like a young,

Skinny Adolf Hitler, but friendly.

 I guess there were a thousand sheep on the road. It was

hot and dusty and nois...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...s closing the barn

door, nothing need be said about it, but still I was in motion

traveling thirty-five miles an hour down the road, watching

houses and groves of trees go by, watching chickens and

mailboxes enter and pass through my vision.

 Then I did not see any houses for a while. "This is where

I get out, " I said.

 The farmer nodded his head. The truck stopped.

 "Thanks a lot, " I said.

 The farmer did not ruin his audition for the Metro...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...hey folded the tent neatly and put it in the

 back of the ambulance, right beside the man's body.

 They drove off down the road, leaving behind them in the

 air, a cloud of brilliant white dust. The dust looked like the

 light from a Coleman lantern.

 Mr. Norris pitched his tent right there and set up all his

 equipment and soon had it all going at once. After he finished

 eating a dehydrated beef Stroganoff dinner, he turned off all

 his equipment...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...will have to go trout fishing.

 Somebody else will have to go

 out there."










 THE TOWEL





We came down the road from Lake Josephus and down the

road from Seafoam. We stopped along the way to get a drink

of water. There was a small monument in the forest. I

walked over to the monument to see what was happening. The

glass door of the lookout was partly open and a towel was

hanging on the other side.

 At the center of the monument ...Read more of this...

by Drinkwater, John
...we are,
That love chimes not nor motions at our pleasure.
We bid him come, and light an eager fire,
And he goes down the road without debating;
We cast him from the house of our desire,
And when at last we leave he will be waiting.
And in the end there is no folly but this,
To counsel love out of our little learning.
For still he knows where rotten timber is,
And where the boughs for the long winter burning;
And when life needs no more of us at all,
Lo...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...lenty, 
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and scream at my eyes, 
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent, 
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is
 ahead? 

4
Trippers and askers surround me; 
People I meet—the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I
 live in, or the nation, 
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ugust it is, and night; a night flauntingly 
jewelled
with stars, a night of shooting stars and loud insect noises.
Down the road to Tilbury, silence -- and the slow flapping of large 
leaves.
Down the road to Sutton, silence -- and the darkness of heavy-foliaged 
trees.
Down the road to Wayfleet, silence -- and the whirring scrape of 
insects
in the branches. Down the road to Edgarstown, silence 
-- and stars like
stepping-stones in a pathway overhead. It...Read more of this...

by Nwakanma, Obi
...
spirits -
Behold the lost souls bearing tapers 
in rags of rich damask, 
Down Thomas - the saint of 
unbelievers - down the road to bliss 
Down to the red house, uncertain 
like a beggar's bowl hanging unto the cliff 
of withdrawn pledges, where the well is 
deepest... 

I have dared to live 
beneath the great untamed. 

To every good, to every 
flicker of stars along the pine 
shadows; 
To every tussle with lucid dusk, 
To every moonlit pled...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...would wash beside a brook my solitary shirt,
And though it dried upon my back I never took a hurt;
When I went romping down the road contemptuous of care,
And slapped Adventure on the back -- by Gad! we were a pair;
When, though my pockets lacked a coin, and though my coat was old,
The largess of the stars was mine, and all the sunset gold;
When time was only made for fools, and free as air was I,
And hard I hit and hard I lived beneath the open sky;
When all the roads were ...Read more of this...

by Kinnell, Galway
...ok out
over miles of valleys and low hills.
Today on skis I took a friend
to show her the trees. We set out
down the road, turned in at
the lane which a few weeks ago,
when the trees were almost empty
and the November snows had not yet come,
lay thickly covered in bright red
and yellow leaves, crossed the swamp,
passed the cellar hole holding
the remains of the 1850s farmhouse
that had slid down into it by stages
in the thirties and forties, followed
the...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...s
Goes by.

Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. 
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here comes the dice -horn, here comes the vice -horn,
Here comes the snarl -horn, brawl -horn, lewd -horn,
Followed by the prude -horn, bleak and squeaking: —
(Some of them from Kansas, some of themn from Kansas.)
Here comes the hod -horn, plod -horn, sod -horn,
Nevermore-to-roam -horn, loam -horn, home -horn.

(S...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...ohl,
coolie, ******, Syrian and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival - 
I taking a sea bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red ******, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red ****** who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, ******, and English in me,
and either I'm nobo...Read more of this...

by Edson, Russell
...y a path leading through an archway called 
adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.
 Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life 
lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you.
 And it is here the future lives in the several postures of 
arm on windowsill, cheek on this; elbows on knees, face in 
the hands; sometimes the head thrown back, eyes staring into 
the ceiling . . . This into nothing down the long day's ...Read more of this...

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