Famous Driving Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Song Of The Wage-Slave

by Robert William Service
 When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay,
I hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say.
And I hope that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met --
All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget.
Look at my face, toil-furrowed; look at my...Read more of this...

Lifes Progress

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 How gayly is at first begun 
Our Life's uncertain Race! 
Whilst yet that sprightly Morning Sun, 
With which we just set out to run 
Enlightens all the Place. 

How smiling the World's Prospect lies 
How tempting to go through ! 
Not Canaan to the Prophet's Eyes, 
From Pisgah with a sweet Surprize, 
Did more inviting shew. 

How promising's the...Read more of this...

Driving my Parents Home at Christmas

by Robert Bly
As I drive my parents home through the snow 
their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.
I call over the cliff 
only snow answers.
They talk quietly
of hauling water of eating an orange 
of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.
When they open the door of their house they disappear.
And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears...Read more of this...

Killers

by Carl Sandburg
 I AM put high over all others in the city today.

I am the killer who kills for those who wish a killing today.

Here is a strong young man who killed.
There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an automatic pistol...Read more of this...

The Gardener XLIV: Reverend Sir Forgive

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Reverend sir, forgive this pair of
sinners. Spring winds to-day are 
blowing in wild eddies, driving dust
and dead leaves away, and with them 
your lessons are all lost.
Do not say, father, that life is a 
vanity.
For we have made truce with death
for once, and only for a few fragrant
hours we two have been made immortal.
Even if the king's army came...Read more of this...

Barbury Camp

by Charles Sorley
 We burrowed night and day with tools of lead,
Heaped the bank up and cast it in a ring
And hurled the earth above. And Caesar said,
“Why, it is excellent. I like the thing.”
We, who are dead,
Made it, and wrought, and Caesar liked the thing.

And here we strove, and here we felt each vein
Ice-bound, each limb fast-frozen, all night long.
And here...Read more of this...

515. Song—O let me in this ae night

by Robert Burns
 O LASSIE, are ye sleepin yet,
Or are ye waukin, I wad wit?
For Love has bound me hand an’ fit,
 And I would fain be in, jo.


Chorus.—O let me in this ae night,
This ae, ae, ae night;
O let me in this ae night,
I’ll no come back again, jo!


O hear’st thou not the wind an’ weet?
Nae star blinks thro’ the driving...Read more of this...

The Capture of Havana

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1762 that France and Spain
Resolved, allied together, to crush Britain;
But the British Army sailed from England in May,
And arrived off Havana without any delay. 

And the British Army resolved to operate on land,
And the appearance of the British troops were really grand;
And by the Earl of Albemarle the British troops were commanded,
All eager for to...Read more of this...

Band Concert

by Carl Sandburg
 BAND concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.

Cowboy rags and ****** rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato...Read more of this...

496. Song—My Nanie's awa

by Robert Burns
 NOW in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,
And listens the lambkins that bleat o’er her braes;
While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw,
But to me it’s delightless—my Nanie’s awa.


The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adorn,
And violetes bathe in the weet o’ the morn;
They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,
They mind me o’ Nanie—and Nanie’s awa.


Thou lav’rock that...Read more of this...

Lilacs

by Amy Lowell
Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a...Read more of this...

The Army Mules

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh the airman's game is a showman's game, for we all of us watch him go 
With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below, 
Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk, 
You'll hear him mutter, "What ho, she bumps," when the Archies get to work. 
But not of him...Read more of this...

Dear Joanne

by Lew Welch
 Dear Joanne,

Last night Magda dreamed that she,
you, Jack, and I were driving around
Italy.

We parked in Florence and left
our dog to guard the car.

She was worried because he
doesn't understand Italian....Read more of this...

I Made A Mistake

by Charles Bukowski
 I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked "are these yours?" 
and she looked and said,
"no, those belong to a dog." 
she left after that and I haven't seen
her since. she's not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back...Read more of this...

112. A Dream

by Robert Burns
 GUID-MORNIN’ to our Majesty!
 May Heaven augment your blisses
On ev’ry new birth-day ye see,
 A humble poet wishes.
My bardship here, at your Levee
 On sic a day as this is,
Is sure an uncouth sight to see,
 Amang thae birth-day dresses
 Sae fine this day.


I see ye’re complimented thrang,
 By mony a lord an’ lady;
“God save the King” ’s a...Read more of this...

Skyscraper

by Carl Sandburg
 BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul...Read more of this...

The Englishman In Italy

by Robert Browning
 (PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers,...Read more of this...

To The Driving Cloud

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas;
Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken!
Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's
Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers
Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their
footprints.
What, in a few short years, will remain...Read more of this...

Magpiety

by Philip Levine
 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
 that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
 the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
 life survives.
In the still heat the engine
 clicks, although
the...Read more of this...

Drinking While Driving

by Raymond Carver
 It's August and I have not 
Read a book in six months 
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt 
Nevertheless, I am happy 
Riding in a car with my brother 
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow. 
We do not have any place in mind to go, 
we are just driving. 
If I closed my eyes for...Read more of this...

The Sharks Parlor

by James Dickey
 Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island 
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first 
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night 
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling 
Under the bedroom floor. In...Read more of this...

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

by Robert Bly
It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around I will waste more time....Read more of this...

The Lost Ingredient

by Anne Sexton
 Almost yesterday, those gentle ladies stole
to their baths in Atlantic Cuty, for the lost
rites of the first sea of the first salt
running from a faucet. I have heard they sat
for hours in briny tubs, patting hotel towels
sweetly over shivered skin, smelling the stale
harbor of a lost ocean, praying at last
for impossible loves, or new skin, or still
another child. And...Read more of this...

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...

Lingering

by Lisa Zaran
 after, when you are driving 
75 miles one way just to get to her 
and her wind-touched hair, 
bleached white by the September 
sun, the gray sky coughing up clouds, 
that is when the doubts surface, 
hard as stones. 

it is late afternoon by the time you arrive, 
the storm has already been through here. 
you are not in...Read more of this...

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