Famous Journey Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Journey poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous journey poems. These examples illustrate what a famous journey poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...nto the lap of the ship bright treasures,
and magnificent war-fittings. Then men shoved out,
warriors on their wanted journey, the wood tightly bound.
Then it departed over the wavy sea, hurried by the wind,
a float foamy-necked, very much like a bird,
until about the same time on the second day,
the whorled prow had traversed the distance,
so that the sailors saw land, the shining sea-cliffs,
the steep hills and the broad promontories.
The sea-crossing was sailed, t...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...Yon battle-king, said he,
far o’er the swan-road he fain would seek,
the noble monarch who needed men!
The prince’s journey by prudent folk
was little blamed, though they loved him dear;
they whetted the hero, and hailed good omens.
And now the bold one from bands of Geats
comrades chose, the keenest of warriors
e’er he could find; with fourteen men
the sea-wood {3a} he sought, and, sailor proved,
led them on to the land’s confines.
Time had now flown; {3b} afloat...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ind and tide.
"Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three days' journey in a moment done:
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn,
On spleenful unicorn.
"I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
Before the vine-wreath crown!
I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing
To the silver cymbals' ring!
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
Old Tartary the fierce!
The kings of Inde their jew...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...rd, and marching in gloomy procession
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers.
Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country,
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn,
So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended
Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters.
Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices,
Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholi...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...Art thou abroad on this stormy night
on thy journey of love, my friend?
The sky groans like one in despair.
I have no sleep tonight.
Ever and again I open my door and look out on
the darkness, my friend!
I can see nothing before me.
I wonder where lies thy path!
By what dim shore of the ink-black river,
by what far edge of the frowning forest,
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou thre...Read more of this...
by
Tagore, Rabindranath
...bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
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 over Denver & brooded & loned in ...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ttack these hardships until I triumph and place in your hands a strength that will help over all things to complete the journey of life.
"Love - which is God - will consider our sighs and tears as incense burned at His altar and He will reward us with fortitude. Good-bye, my beloved; I must leave before the heartening moon vanishes."
A pure voice, combined of the consuming flame of love, and the hopeless bitterness of longing and the resolved sweetness of patience, said, ...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...oll
To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer.
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy:
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy,
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,
My heart will keep the courage of the quest,
And hope the road's last turn will be the best....Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...
Then came in dancing, skipping with his life
Across the roar and chaos, and the words
We saw him say along the zigzag journey
Were doubtless as the words we heard him say
On coming nearer: "Wasn't she an i-deal
Son-of-a-*****? You bet she was an i-deal."
For all her mountains fall a little short,
Her people not quite short enough for Art,
She's still New Hampshire; a most restful state.
Lately in converse with a New York alec
About the new school of the pseudo-phallic,
I ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...that region lost,
All usurpation thence expelled, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey), and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night.
Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge!"
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answered: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art-- ***
That mighty leading Angel, who of late
Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown.
I saw a...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...strange,
Worthy of sacred silence to be heard;
And we have yet large day, for scarce the sun
Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins
His other half in the great zone of Heaven.
Thus Adam made request; and Raphael,
After short pause assenting, thus began.
High matter thou enjoinest me, O prime of men,
Sad task and hard: For how shall I relate
To human sense the invisible exploits
Of warring Spirits? how, without remorse,
The ruin of so many glorious once ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...mes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the
wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any stat...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...jocund June Rolled fast along the sky his warm and genial moon. But ill it suited me, in journey dark O'er moor and mountain, midnight theft to hatch; To charm the surly house-dog's faithful bark, Or hang on tiptoe at the lifted latch; The gloomy lantern, and the dim blue match, The black disguise, the warning whistle shrill, And ear still busy on its nightly watch, Wer...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry....Read more of this...
by
Tagore, Rabindranath
...and spiritual persons discourse in this 'Vision.' But, for precedents upon such points, I must refer him to Fielding's 'Journey from the World to the next,' and to the Visions of myself, the said Quevedo, in Spanish or translated. The reader is also requested to observe, that no doctrinal tenets are insisted upon or discussed; that the person of the Deity is carefully withheld from sight, which is more than can be said for the Laureate, who hath thought proper to make him tal...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...rt of the poem, is not an accident.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
In the first part of Part V three themes are employed:
the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous
(see Miss Weston's book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush
which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of
Birds of Eastern North America) "it is most at home in secluded
woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ht boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water; till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
To journey from the misty east began.
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden, and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits.
In mighty legions million after million
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
They pitched upon the...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
19 April 1962
Moscow...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...
But I a lyric garland bring
To crown thee, O, mine enemy!
Thanks, endless thanks, to thee I owe
For that my lifelong journey through
Thine honest hate has done for me
What love perchance had failed to do.
I had not scaled such weary heights
But that I held thy scorn in fear,
And never keenest lure might match
The subtle goading of thy sneer.
Thine anger struck from me a fire
That purged all dull content away,
Our mortal strife to me has been
Unflagging spur from day to...Read more of this...
by
Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...eceive
A letter like a bride
To my friend I give
Response late at night.
"I'll be guest of the white death
On my journey down.
You, my tender one, don't do
Harm to anyone."
And there stands a giant star
Between two wood beams,
With such calmness promising
To fulfil your dreams.
x x x
Divine angel, who betrothed us
Secretly on winter morn,
From our sadness-free existence
Does not take his darkened eyes.
For this reason we love sky,
And fresh w...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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