Famous Highways Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Highways poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous highways poems. These examples illustrate what a famous highways poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Nandy, Pritish
...my hands with the darkness of
your hair. This passion alone can resurrect our love.
I have travelled all the lonely highways in the
autumn and watched all the lonesome cities pale at
dust. I have held all those tired strangers in my...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...the same.)
But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much.
He's into everything in town. This year
It's highways, and he's got too many men
Around him to look after that make waste.
They take advantage of him shamefully,
And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.
We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings,
Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk
While I fry their bacon. Much they care!
No more put out in what they do or say
Th...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...e for my dame,
your sample cases branded with my father's name,
your itinerary open,
its tolls ticking and greedy,
its highways built up like new loves, raw and speedy....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...oaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched ...Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...ered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again....Read more of this...
by
Cather, Willa
...ding and blooming
Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.
"Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you,
Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears--
North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years....Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...'s peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel,
No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;
And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.
We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;
Yet not one brown, hard hand foregoes its hon...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...oo securely scans what is,
Ever to be appalled at what is not;
He sees beyond the groaning borough lines
Of Hell, God's highways gleaming, and he knows
That Love's complete communion is the end
Of anguish to the liberated man.
XXIII
Here by the windy docks I stand alone,
But yet companioned. There the vessel goes,
And there my friend goes with it; but the wake
That melts and ebbs between that friend and me
Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful
And all-triumph...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Duncan Campbell
...s.
But still is Beauty and of constant power;
Even in the whirl of Time's most sordid hour,
Banished from the great highways,
Afflighted by the tramp of insolent feet,
She hangs her garlands in the by-ways;
Lissome and sweet
Bending her head to hearken and learn
Melody shadowed with melody,
Softer than shadow of sea-fern,
In the green-shadowed sea:
Then, nourished by quietude,
And if the world's mood
Change, she may return
Even lovelier than before. --
The white refl...Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.
Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
"Who'll beyond the hills away?"
Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.
Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Brea...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...h the swift-falling steps of many dogs,
Following, following at my side.
O Roads that journey to fairyland!
Radiant highways whose vistas gleam,
Leading me on, under crimson leaves,
To the opaline gates of the Castles of Dream....Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...rn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the stragglins train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...silver rainy arrows.
It bears the song of the skylark down,
And it hears the singing of the town;
And youth on the highways
And lovers in byways
Follows and sees:
And hearkens the song of the leas
And sings the songs of the highways.
So when the earth is alive with gods,
And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
And the grass sings in the meadows,
And the flowers smile in the shadows,
Sits my heart at ease,
Hearing the song of the leas,
Singing the songs of the meadow...Read more of this...
by
Kilmer, Joyce
...in where the saint had lain,
For his soul had fled afar,
From his fleshly home he had gone to roam
Where the gold-paved highways are.
We who beg for bread as we daily tread
Country lane and city street,
Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway
To the saint with the vagrant feet.
Our altar light is a buttercup bright,
And our shrine is a bank of sod,
But still we share St. Alexis' care,
The Vagabond of God!...Read more of this...
by
Verhaeren, Emile
...ting swing,
Would stop on a day that heart-breaking ring!
And the endless procession of corse after corse.
Choke the highways no more of his long remorse
But the biers, with the prayers and the tears,
Immensely yet follow the biers;
They halt by crucifix now, and by shrine,
Then take up once more their mournful line;
On the backs of men, upon trestles borne.
They follow their uniform march forlorn;
Skirting each field and each garden-wall.
Passing beneath the sign-...Read more of this...
by
Davidson, John
...ath.
In lee-valleys crowded,
The sheep and the birds
Were frozen and shrouded
In flights and in herds.
In highways
And byways
The young and the old
Were tortured and madden'd
And kill'd by the cold.
But many were gladden'd
By the beautiful last rose,
The blossom of no name
That came when the snow came,
In darkness unfurl'd--
The wonderful vast rose
That fill'd all the world....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ok of Braille.
And there will be music and dancing too,
And we'll seek to fashion our life anew;
And we'll walk the highways hand in hand,
The Brotherhood of the Sightless Band;
Till the years at last shall bring respite
And our night is lost in the Greater Night....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...tween two worlds—
To guide us, or to blind us for a time,
Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites
A few on highways, changing all at once,
Is not for all. The power that holds the world
Away from God that holds himself away—
Farther away than all your works and words
Are like to fly without the wings of faith—
Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard
Enlivening the ways of easy leisure
Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes
Have wisdom, we ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...WHAT best I see in thee,
Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,
Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,
Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace,
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia, swarm’d upon,
Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;
But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,
Those prairie sovereigns of ...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...the marsh.
Easy 'tis following the chariot
That by Fortune is driven,
Like the baggage that moves
Over well-mended highways
After the train of a prince.
But who stands there apart?
In the thicket, lost is his path;
Behind him the bushes
Are closing together,
The grass springs up again,
The desert engulphs him.
Ah, who'll heal his afflictions,
To whom balsam was poison,
Who, from love's fullness,
Drank in misanthropy only?
First despised, and now a despiser,
He,...Read more of this...
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