Famous Driver Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Application For A Driving License

by Michael Ondaatje
 Two birds loved
in a flurry of red feathers
like a burst cottonball,
continuing while I drove over them.
I am a good driver, nothing shocks me....Read more of this...

Driver Smith

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Twas Driver Smith of Battery A was anxious to see a fight; 
He thought of the Transvaal all the day, he thought of it all the night -- 
"Well, if the battery's left behind, I'll go to the war," says he, 
"I'll go a-driving and ambulance in the ranks of the A.M.C. 
"I'm fairly sick of these here parades...Read more of this...

John Hancock Otis

by Edgar Lee Masters
 As to democracy, fellow citizens,
Are you not prepared to admit
That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
Was second to none in Spoon River
In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?
While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
Born in a shanty and beginning life
As a water carrier to the section hands,
Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,
Afterwards foreman...Read more of this...

Account of a Visit From ST. Nicholas

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 "Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,
And mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had...Read more of this...

Noctambule

by Robert William Service
 Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been...Read more of this...

Exmoor

by Amy Clampitt
 Lost aboard the roll of Kodac-
olor that was to have super-
seded all need to remember
Somerset were: a large flock

of winter-bedcover-thick-
pelted sheep up on the moor;
a stile, a church spire, 
and an excess, at Porlock,

of tenderly barbarous antique
thatch in tandem with flower-
beds, relentlessly pictur-
esque, along every sidewalk;

a millwheel; and a millbrook 
running down brown as beer.
Exempt from the disaster.
however, as...Read more of this...

The Lamplighter

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky.
It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
And my papa's a banker and as rich...Read more of this...

The Executor

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Greedy Heir long waited to fulfill, 
As his Executor, a Kinsman's Will; 
And to himself his Age repeated o'er, 
To his Infirmities still adding more; 
And nicely kept th' Account of the expected Store: 
When Death, at last, to either gave Release, 
Making One's Pains, the Other's Longings cease: 
Who to the Grave must decently convey, 
Ere he...Read more of this...

June 6

by David Lehman
 No two are identical though
they begin from the same
point in time the same point in
the dream when the radio shuts
itself off in the middle of
"Just in Time" (Sinatra version)
the curtains are blowing in
and the driver of the hearse
outside looks up and says "Room
for one more" and now you
know what kind of hospital you're in
and you must escape from it
by...Read more of this...

Meeting Among the Mountains

by D. H. Lawrence
 The little pansies by the road have turned 
Away their purple faces and their gold, 
And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme, 
And all the scent is shed away by the cold. 

Against the hard and pale blue evening sky 
The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear 
Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendent 
Clean pain sending...Read more of this...

From A German War Primer

by Bertolt Brecht
 AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.

The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.

For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.

They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.

If the lowly do not
Think about what's...Read more of this...

Priscilla

by Robert William Service
 Jerry MacMullen, the millionaire,
Driving a red-meat bus out there --
How did he win his Croix de Guerre?
Bless you, that's all old stuff:
Beast of a night on the Verdun road,
Jerry stuck with a woeful load,
Stalled in the mud where the red lights glowed,
Prospect devilish tough.

"Little Priscilla" he called his car,
Best of our battered bunch by far,
Branded with many a bullet...Read more of this...

Old Engine Driver

by Robert William Service
 For five and twenty years I've run
 A famous train;
But now my spell of speed is done,
 No more I'll strain
My sight along the treadless tracks,
 The gleamy rails:
My hand upon the throttle slacks,
 My vision fails.

No more I'll urge my steed of steel
 Through hostile nights;
No more the mastery I'll feel
 Of monster might.
I'll miss the hiss of...Read more of this...

Young In New Orleans

by Charles Bukowski
 starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, mabye it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New...Read more of this...

An Apology for my fearfull temper

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Tis true of courage I'm no mistress
No Boadicia nor Thalestriss
Nor shall I e'er be famed hereafter
For such a Soul as Cato's Daughter
Nor active valour nor enduring 
Nor leading troops nor forts securing
Like Teckley's wife or Pucell valiant
Will e'er be reckonded for my talent
Who all things fear whilst day is shining
And my own shadow light declining 
And from the Spleen's...Read more of this...

A Song Of Despair

by Pablo Neruda
 The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song...Read more of this...

Tract

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh...Read more of this...

From A German War Primer

by Bertolt Brecht
 AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.

The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.

For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.

They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.

If the lowly do not
Think about what's...Read more of this...

Days of Pie and Coffee

by Edward Taylor
 A motorist once said to me, 
and this was in the country, 
on a county lane, a motorist 
slowed his vehicle as I was 
walking my dear old collie,
Sithney, by the side of the road, 
and the motorist came to a halt 
mildly alarming both Sithney and myself, 
not yet accustomed to automobiles, 
and this particular motorist 
sent a...Read more of this...

Careers

by Robert Graves
 Father is quite the greatest poet 
 That ever lived anywhere. 
You say you’re going to write great music— 
 I chose that first: it’s unfair. 
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and 
 do Christ and angels, or lovely pears 
 and apples and grapes on a green dish, 
 or storms at sea, or anything...Read more of this...

Saving a Train

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1869, and on the 19th of November,
Which the people in Southern Germany will long remember,
The great rain-storm which for twenty hours did pour down,
That the rivers were overflowed and petty streams all around. 

The rain fell in such torrents as had never been seen before,
That it seemed like a second deluge, the mighty torrents'...Read more of this...

The Driver

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "What knight or what vassal will be so bold
As to plunge in the gulf below?
See! I hurl in its depths a goblet of gold,
Already the waters over it flow.
The man who can bring back the goblet to me,
May keep it henceforward,--his own it shall be."

Thus speaks the king, and he hurls from the height
Of the cliffs that, rugged and...Read more of this...

Drum-Taps

by Walt Whitman
 1
FIRST, O songs, for a prelude, 
Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum, pride and joy in my city, 
How she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue, 
How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; 
(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!
O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer...Read more of this...

Saltbush Bills Second Flight

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The news came down on the Castlereagh, and went to the world at large, 
That twenty thousand travelling sheep, with Saltbush Bill in charge, 
Were drifting down from a dried-out run to ravage the Castlereagh; 
And the squatters swore when they heard the news, and wished they were well away: 
For the name and the fame of Saltbush Bill...Read more of this...

Days of Pie and Coffee

by James Tate
 A motorist once said to me, 
and this was in the country, 
on a county lane, a motorist 
slowed his vehicle as I was 
walking my dear old collie,
Sithney, by the side of the road, 
and the motorist came to a halt 
mildly alarming both Sithney and myself, 
not yet accustomed to automobiles, 
and this particular motorist 
sent a...Read more of this...

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