Famous Eastward Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Tractor

by Ted Hughes
 The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness. 

It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

He fell among Thieves

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 ‘Ye have robb’d,’ said he, ‘ye have slaughter’d and made an end,
Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead:
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?’
‘Blood for our blood,’ they said.

He laugh’d: ‘If one may settle the score for five,
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any...Read more of this...

Impression De Voyage

by Oscar Wilde
 The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky
Burned like a heated opal through the air;
We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair
For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.
From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye
Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,
Ithaca's cliff, Lycaon's snowy peak,
And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady.
The flapping of the sail against the...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Wooing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 "As unto the bow the cord is, 
So unto the man is woman; 
Though she bends him, she obeys him, 
Though she draws him, yet she follows; 
Useless each without the other!"
Thus the youthful Hiawatha 
Said within himself and pondered, 
Much perplexed by various feelings, 
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing, 
Dreaming still of Minnehaha, 
Of the lovely Laughing Water, 
In...Read more of this...

Move Eastward Happy Earth

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Move eastward, happy earth, and leave 
Yon orange sunset waning slow: 
From fringes of the faded eve, 
O, happy planet, eastward go: 
Till over thy dark shoulder glow 
Thy silver sister world, and rise 
To glass herself in dewey eyes 
That watch me from the glen below. 

Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne, 
Dip forward under starry light,...Read more of this...

The Wander-Light

by Henry Lawson
 And they heard the tent-poles clatter, 
And the fly in twain was torn – 
'Tis the soiled rag of a tatter 
Of the tent where I was born. 
And what matters it, I wonder? 
Brick or stone or calico? – 
Or a bush you were born under, 
When it happened long ago? 

And my beds were camp beds and...Read more of this...

The White Mans Foot

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All...Read more of this...

Day That I Have Loved

by Rupert Brooke
 Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies.
I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,

Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making
Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.
There you'll be laid, past...Read more of this...

The Last Oracle

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 eipate toi basilei, xamai pese daidalos aula. 
ouketi PHoibos exei kaluban, ou mantida daphnen, 
ou pagan laleousan . apesbeto kai lalon udor. 

Years have risen and fallen in darkness or in twilight, 
Ages waxed and waned that knew not thee nor thine, 
While the world sought light by night and sought not thy light, 
Since the sad last pilgrim...Read more of this...

The Needle

by Ezra Pound
 Come, or the stellar tide will slip away.
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline,
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul!
Here we have had our vantage, the good hour.
Here we have had our day, your day and mine.
Come now, before this power
That bears us up, shall turn against the pole.

Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be....Read more of this...

To Urania

by Joseph Brodsky
 Everything has its limit, including sorrow.
A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon
a leaf. One may rattle the keys, gurgle down a swallow.
Loneless cubes a man at random.
A camel sniffs at the rail with a resentful nostril;
a perspective cuts emptiness deep and even. 
And what is space anyway if not the
body's absence at every given
point? That's why...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

The Quarry

by William Vaughn Moody
 Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea
I met a sacred elephant, snow-white.
Upon his back a huge pagoda towered
Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice.
Upon his forehead sat a golden throne,
The massy metal twisted into shapes
Grotesque, antediluvian, such as move
In myth or have their broken images
Sealed in the stony middle of the hills.
A peacock spread his thousand...Read more of this...

As Slow Our Ship

by Thomas Moore
 As slow our ship her foamy track 
Against the wind was cleaving, 
Her trembling pennant still look'd back 
To that dear isle 'twas leaving. 
So loath we part from all we love, 
From all the links that bind us; 
So turn our hearts as on we rove, 
To those we've left behind us. 

When, round the bowl, of vanish'd...Read more of this...

We May Roam Through This World

by Thomas Moore
 We may roam through this world, like a child at a feast, 
Who but sips of a sweet, and then flies to the rest; 
And, when pleasure begins to grow dull in the east, 
We may order our wings and be off to the west: 
But if hearts that feel, and eyes that smile, 
Are the dearest gifts that...Read more of this...

A Bay In Anglesey

by John Betjeman
 The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide
Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,

Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift
Round low peninsulas pink with thrift.

The water, enlarging shells and sand,
Grows greener emerald out from land

And brown over shadowy shelves below
The waving forests of seaweed show.

Here at my feet in the short cliff grass
Are shells, dried bladderwrack, broken glass,

Pale blue...Read more of this...

The Naulahka

by Rudyard Kipling
 There was a strife 'twixt man and maid--
Oh, that was at the birth of time!
But what befell 'twixt man and maid,
Oh, that's beyond the grip of rhyme.
'Twas "Sweet, I must not bide with you,"
And, "Love, I cannot bide alone";
For both were young and both were true.
And both were hard as the nether stone.

Beware the man who's crossed in love;
...Read more of this...

To Urania To I.K

by Joseph Brodsky
Everything has its limit including sorrow.
A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon
a leaf. One may rattle the keys gurgle down a swallow.
Loneless cubes a man at random.
A camel sniffs at the rail with a resentful nostril;
a perspective cuts emptiness deep and even.
And what is space anyway if not the
body's absence at every given
point? That's why Urania's older...Read more of this...

Ode to the Northeast Wind

by Charles Kingsley
 Welcome, wild Northeaster! 
Shame it is to see 
Odes to every zephyr; 
Ne'er a verse to thee. 
Welcome, black Northeaster! 
O'er the German foam; 
O'er the Danish moorlands, 
From thy frozen home. 
Tired are we of summer, 
Tired of gaudy glare, 
Showers soft and steaming, 
Hot and breathless air. 
Tired of listless dreaming, 
Through the lazy day-- 
Jovial wind...Read more of this...

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field

by Walt Whitman
 VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night: 
When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day, 
One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return’d, with a look I shall never forget;

One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground; 
Then onward I sped...Read more of this...

Centenarian's Story The

by Walt Whitman
 GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary; 
The hill-top is nigh—but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;) 
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years; 
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done; 
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.

Rest, while I tell what the...Read more of this...

Gods Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears...Read more of this...

The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old. 

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.


I

Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining...Read more of this...

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