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Famous Drive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...into houses.
After your houses are built, and your fields are yellow with harvests,
No King George of England shall drive you away from your homesteads,
Burning your dwellings and barns, and stealing your farms and your cattle."
Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his nostrils,
While his huge, brown hand came thundering down on the table,
So that the guests all started; and...Read more of this...



by Carver, Raymond
...Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fe...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...oon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at
noon.

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
With mitred dusky leaves will scent the win...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ght thereof; for 'tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might:
Yea, by that law, another race may drive
Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.
Have ye beheld the young God of the seas,
My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?
Have ye beheld his chariot, foam'd along
By noble winged creatures he hath made?
I saw him on the calmed waters scud,
With such a glow of beauty in his eyes,
That it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell
To all my empire: farewell sad I...Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
...n my poem, but as long as I don't bother her, she's glad 

to know I care. She's talked my father into taking 
a drive later, stopping for an A & W root beer. 
She is dreaming of foam on the glass, the tray propped 

on the car window. And trees, farmhouses, the expanse 
of the world as seen from inside the car. It is no 
use to try to get her out to watch airplanes 

take off, or walk a trail, or hear this poem 
and offer anything more than "Isn't ...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...and Nisus died in strife. His chase 
 He shall not cease, nor any cowering-place 
 Her fear shall find her, till he drive her back, 
 From city to city exiled, from wrack to wrack 
 Slain out of life, to find the native hell 
 Whence envy loosed her. 
 For thyself were
 well 
 To follow where I lead, and thou shalt see 
 The spirits in pain, and hear the hopeless woe, 
 The unending cries, of those whose only plea 
 Is judgment, that the second death to be 
 Fall quic...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the 
hill
past the houses
full and emptey
of
people,
i saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...h may find 
To our destruction, if there be in Hell 
Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse 
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned 
In this abhorred deep to utter woe! 
Where pain of unextinguishable fire 
Must exercise us without hope of end 
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge 
Inexorably, and the torturing hour, 
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus, 
We should be quite abolished, and expire. 
What fear we then? what doubt we to in...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...ke a small dark cloud
Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd,
Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud
And the dense arrows drive.

Lady, by one light only
We look from Alfred's eyes,
We know he saw athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where One more than Melchizedek
Is dead and never dies.

Therefore I bring these rhymes to you
Who brought the cross to me,
Since on you flaming without flaw
I saw the sign that Guthrum saw
When he let break his ships of a...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five day...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...t was the purpose of his pilgrimage, 
290 Whatever shape it took in Crispin's mind, 
291 If not, when all is said, to drive away 
292 The shadow of his fellows from the skies, 
293 And, from their stale intelligence released, 
294 To make a new intelligence prevail? 
295 Hence the reverberations in the words 
296 Of his first central hymns, the celebrants 
297 Of rankest trivia, tests of the strength 
298 Of his aesthetic, his philosophy, 
299 The more invidious, th...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...e, 
That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! 

Come you to trouble with your potent sneer 
The feast of Life! or are you driven here, 
To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir 
And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? 

Or do you hope, when sing the violins, 
And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, 
To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, 
And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? 

Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! 
Eternal alembic of antique di...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...th, O strength, O gleaming share, 
O patient eyes that watch the goal, 
O ploughman of the sinner's soul. 
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep 
To plough my living man from sleep.

Slow up the hill the plough team plod, 
Old Callow at the task of God, 
Helped by man's wit, helped by the brute, 
Turning a stubborn clay to fruit, 
His eyes forever on some sign 
To help him plough a perfect line. 
At top of rise the plough team stopped, 
The fore-horse bent his head and ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...t,
That is to say, that whether he or thou
May with his hundred, as I spake of now,
Slay his contrary, or out of listes drive,
Him shall I given Emily to wive,
To whom that fortune gives so fair a grace.
The listes shall I make here in this place.
*And God so wisly on my soule rue*, *may God as surely have
As I shall even judge be and true. mercy on my soul*
Ye shall none other ende with me maken
Than one of you shalle be dead or taken.
And if you thinketh thi...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...th,
     And, disobedient to my call,
     Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall.
     Ere Douglases, to ruin driven,
     Were exiled from their native heaven.—
     O! if yet worse mishap and woe
     My master's house must undergo,
     Or aught but weal to Ellen fair
     Brood in these accents of despair,
     No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling
     Triumph or rapture from thy string;
     One short, one final strain shall flow,
     Fraught with un...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...she weep or sing.

O firste moving cruel Firmament,
With thy diurnal sway that crowdest* aye, *pushest together, drivest
And hurtlest all from East till Occident
That naturally would hold another way;
Thy crowding set the heav'n in such array
At the beginning of this fierce voyage,
That cruel Mars hath slain this marriage.

Unfortunate ascendant tortuous,
Of which the lord is helpless fall'n, alas!
Out of his angle into the darkest house;
O Mars, O Atyzar, as in...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________

PLATE 3

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
s...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...I looked at her. She had on a high- necked dress. I had
never seen her in one of those. And under each eye, driven in, were 2 pins with glass
heads. All you could see were the heads of the pins, but the pins were driven down into
her face. 
"God damn you, still trying to destroy your beauty, eh?" 
"No, it's the fad, you fool." 
"You're crazy." 
"I've missed you," she said. 
"Is there anybody else?"
"No there isn't anybody else. Just you.Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...er Theme in view --

FOR, see! where Winter comes, himself, confest,
Striding the gloomy Blast. First Rains obscure
Drive thro' the mingling Skies, with Tempest foul;
Beat on the Mountain's Brow, and shake the Woods, 
That, sounding, wave below. The dreary Plain
Lies overwhelm'd, and lost. The bellying Clouds
Combine, and deepening into Night, shut up
The Day's fair Face. The Wanderers of Heaven,
Each to his Home, retire; save those that love 
To take their Pa...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...ng insolent
To Lincoln and Seward over the Trent.
All very long ago, you'll say,
But whenever I go up Boston-way,
I drive through Concord—that neck of the wood, 
Where once the embattled farmers stood, 
And I think of Revere, and the old South Steeple, 
And I say, by heck, we're the only people 
Who licked them not only once, but twice. 
Never forget it-that's my advice. 
They have their points—they're honest and brave,
Loyal and sure—as sure as the grave; 
They m...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things