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Famous Journeying Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...Father Vicar's house; the stars on high

On all around their beauteous radiance cast,

At 
midnight hour.

And when, in journeying o'er the path of life,

My love I follow'd, as she onward moved,
With stars and northern lights o'er head in strife,

Going and coming, perfect bliss I proved

At 
midnight hour.

Until at length the full moon, lustre-fraught,

Burst thro' the gloom wherein she was enshrined;
And then the willing, active, rapid thought

Around the past, as round t...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang



...young on Skegness beach

Before I was born I answered her cry

For a lost child still in the womb still

As the seawave journeying green upon green

Swollen in my mother’s side lashed and

Tongue-tied on a raft of premonition

Trying to survive my birth as the soul

Survives death turned in on the tide high

Watermarked as a bride to my beginning.



In April rain the banks were white narcissi

Yellow daffodils in Chapeltown alyssum at the

Foot of every tree white bands roun...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...o with Adonis all night long had lain
Within some shepherd's hut in Arcady,
On team of silver doves and gilded wain
Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar
From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,

And when low down she spied the hapless pair,
And heard the Oread's faint despairing cry,
Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air
As though it were a viol, hastily
She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume,
And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...
Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,
But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky.
Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high,
And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd;
Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd
Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side:
There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd
To faint once more by looking on my bliss--
I was distracted; madly did I kiss
The wooing arms which held me, and did give
My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
..., nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;
But far from such companionship to wear
An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away,
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?
"No!" exclaimed he, "why should I tarry here?"
No! loudly echoed times in...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...em; soon,
It seem'd as when around the pale new moon
Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow:
'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow.
For the first time, since he came nigh dead born
From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn
Had he left more forlorn; for the first time,
He felt aloof the day and morning's prime--
Because into his depth Cimmerian
There came a dream, shewing how a young man,
Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin,
Would at high Jove's ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...When two years after came a boy to be
The rosy idol of her solitudes,
While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas,
Or often journeying landward; for in truth
Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil
In ocean-smelling osier, and his face,
Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales,
Not only to the market-cross were known,
But in the leafy lanes behind the down,
Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp,
And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall,
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's minister...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
 a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately...Read more of this...
by Clare, John
...ou see, 
 I'm thy master and thy prey. 
 My bright steed shall pleasure be; 
 Yours, it shall be love, I say. 
 
 "Journeying leisurely we go, 
 We will make our steeds touch heads, 
 Kiss for fodder,—and we so 
 Satisfy our horses' needs. 
 
 "Come! the two delusive things 
 Stamp impatiently it seems, 
 Yours has heavenward soaring wings, 
 Mine is of the land of dreams. 
 
 "What's our baggage? only vows, 
 Happiness, and all our care, 
 And the flower tha...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...to whom the Christians pray.

Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowls
Of fever-balm and sweet sagamite:
But she was journeying to the land of souls,
And lifted up her dying head to pray
That we should bid an ancient friend convey
Her orphan to his home of England's shore;
And take, she said, this token far away,
To one that will remember us of yore,
When he beholds the ring that Waldegrave's Julia wore.

And I, the eagle of my tribe, have rush'd
With this lorn dove."--A s...Read more of this...
by Campbell, Thomas
...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
...,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
Thrown down abysmal places? 

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
Sweet soul-delighted faces; 

As voices are we in the worldly wind;
The great wind of the world’s fate
Is turn’d, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
And marvellous desires. 

But not in the world as voices storm-shatter’d,
Not borne down by the wind’s weight;
The rushing time rings with our s...Read more of this...
by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...l cammino e s? de la pietate, 
che ritrarr? la mente che non erra . 

alone prepared to undergo the battle 
both of the journeying and of the pity, 
which memory, mistaking not, shall show. 


O muse, o alto ingegno, or m'aiutate; 
o mente che scrivesti ci? ch'io vidi, 
qui si parr? la tua nobilitate . 

O Muses, o high genius, help me now; 
o memory that set down what I saw, 
here shall your excellence reveal itself! 


Io cominciai: «Poeta che mi guidi, 
guarda la mia virt?...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...eas
in prosperous weather: drifting banners tell
Their progress to the counties; with them goes
The clamour of their journeying; while those 25
Who sped them stand to wave a last farewell.
...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...sunshine. Her alarms
Would lessen when she saw him standing there,

XLII
Simple and kind, a brother just returned From 
journeying, and he would treat her so.
She knew his honest heart, and if there burned A spark in it 
he would not let it show.
But when he really came, and stood beside Her underneath the 
fruitless cherry boughs,
He seemed a tired man, gaunt, leaden-eyed. He 
made her no more vows,
Nor did he mention one thing he had tried
To put into his letter. War suppli...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...u Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary! 
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks! 
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah! 
You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you peering amid the
 ruins
 of
 Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat! 
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of Mecca! 
You she...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...eft me. 

My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying. 

Be careful, darkness! already, what was it touch’d me? 
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one, 
I hear the heart-beat—I follow, I fade away. 

7
O hot-cheek’d and blushing! O foolish hectic!
O for pity’s sake, no one must see me now! my clothes were stolen while I was abed, 
Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run? 

Pier t...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...her pinned you?
And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,
I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.
What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
When we mind labour, then only, we're too old---
What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,
(Come all the way from the north-parts ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...nd of Aromat-- 
After the day of darkness, when the dead 
Went wandering o'er Moriah--the good saint 
Arimathan Joseph, journeying brought 
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn 
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. 
And there awhile it bode; and if a man 
Could touch or see it, he was healed at once, 
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times 
Grew to such evil that the holy cup 
Was caught away to Heaven, and disappeared.' 

To whom the monk: `From our old books...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r men than any yet, 
Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my songs by these shores, 
Of California, of Oregon—and of me journeying to live and sing there;
Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between it and the spinal river, 
Of the great pastoral area, athletic and feminine, 
of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver, the mother, the Mississippi flows, 
Of future women there—of happiness in those high plateaus, ranging three thousand
 miles,
 warm and cold; 
Of...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry