Famous Pathway Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pathway poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pathway poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pathway poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy,
Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy;
Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,—
Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong.
All the night through, though I moan in the dark,
I wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves,
Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves.
But when...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
If Mary had known
When she held her Babe's hands in her own
Little hands that were tender and white as a rose,
All dented with dimples from finger to wrist,
Such as mothers have kissed
That one day they must feel the fierce blows
Of a hatred insane,
Must redden with holiest stain,
And grasp as their guerdon the boon of the bitterest pain,
Oh, I think...Read more of this...
by
Charles Sorley
I
SAINTS have adored the lofty soul of you.
Poets have whitened at your high renown.
We stand among the many millions who
Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.
You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried
To live as of your presence unaware.
But now in every road on every side
We see your straight and steadfast...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
SHE has gone,-- she has left us in passion and pride,--
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe!
Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,
We can never forget that our hearts have been one,--
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name,
From the fountain...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Oh! beautiful Oban with your lovely bay,
Your surroundings are magnificent on a fine summer-day;
There the lover of the picturesque can behold,
As the sun goes down, the scenery glittering like gold.
And on a calm evening, behind the village let him climb the hill,
And as he watches the sun go down, with delight his heart will fill
As he beholds the...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
I
With you I shall ever be;
Over land and sea
My thoughts will companion you;
With yours shall my laughter chime,
And my step keep time
In the dusk and dew
With yours in blithesome rhyme;
In all of your joy shall I rejoice,
On my lips your sorrow shall find a voice,
And when your tears in...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Goethe began to write an opera called Lowenstuhl,
founded upon the old tradition which forms the subject of this Ballad,
but he never carried out his design.]
OH, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,
The portals we straightway will bar.
Our mother is praying, our father is gone
To the forest, on wolves to make...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Mother focused with a frown
The part of me where I sit down.
Said she: "Your pants are wearing through;
Let me sew on a patch for you."
And so she did,--of azure blue.
My britches were of sober grey,
And when I went to school next day,
The fellows said: "Excuse our smile:
We saw your patch 'way off a mile."
Said I: "Sure, it's the latest...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE II. Amor, se vuoi ch' i' torni al giogo antico. UNLESS LOVE CAN RESTORE HER TO LIFE, HE WILL NEVER AGAIN BE HIS SLAVE. If thou wouldst have me, Love, thy slave again,One other proof, miraculous and new,Must yet be wrought by you,Ere, conquer'd, I resume my ancient chain—Lift my...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.
At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I
LEGEND
Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus,
youngest of the shepherds,
Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees."
Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.
Happy Aristæus loitered in the garden, wandered
in the orchard,
Careless and contented, indolent and free;
Lightly took his labour, lightly took his...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My garden hath a slender path
With ivy overgrown,
A secret place where once would pace
A pot all alone;
I see him now with fretted brow,
Plunged deep in thought;
And sometimes he would write maybe,
And sometimes he would not.
A verse a day he used to say
Keeps worry from the door;
Without the stink of printer's ink
How life would be a bore!
And so from chime...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Farewell! but whenever you welcome the hour
That awakens the night-song of mirth in your bower,
Then think of the friend who once welcomed it too,
And forgot his own griefs to be happy with you.
His griefs may return, not a hope may remain
Of the few that have brighten'd his pathway of pain,
But he ne'er will...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHEN by the broad stream thou dost dwell,
Oft shallow is its sluggish flood;
Then, when thy fields thou tendest well,
It o'er them spreads its slime and mud.
The ships descend ere daylight wanes,
The prudent fisher upward goes;
Round reef and rock ice casts its chains,
And boys at will the pathway close.
To this attend, then, carefully,
And what thou wouldst, that execute!
Ne'er linger, ne'er...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Mysterious chambers of the air.
Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
And at the windows seen again.
Until at last, serene and proud
In all the...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into
As she picked her dainty passage through
The dusty street. "Ah, Mademoiselle,
A dirty pathway, we need rain,
My poor fruits suffer, and the shell
Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain
Here in the sun it has shrunk again.
The baker down...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
I saw thee once- once only- years ago:
I must not say how many- but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of...Read more of this...
by
Charles Sorley
Saints have adored the lofty soul of you.
Poets have whitened at your high renown.
We stand among the many millions who
Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.
You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried
To live as of your presence unaware.
But now in every road on every side
We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.
I think it like that signpost...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Though not for common praise of him,
Nor yet for pride or charity,
Still would I make to Vanderberg
One tribute for his memory:
One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass—
Who neither blamed him in defect
Nor marveled how it came to pass;
Or why it ever was that he—
That Vanderberg,...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Last night the Stork came stalking,
And, Stork, beneath your wing
Lay, lapped in dreamless slumber,
The tiniest little thing!
From Babyland, out yonder
Beside a silver sea,
You brought a priceless treasure
As gift to mine and me!
Last night my dear one listened -
And, wife, you knew the cry -
The dear old Stork has sought our home
A many times gone by!
And in your gentle bosom
I...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
There is a power whose inspiration fills
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,
Like airy dew ere any drop distils,
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing,
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field,
When...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
'Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad,
In thy house or my house is half the world's hoard;
By my house and thy house hangs all the world's fate,
On thy house and my house lies half the world's hate.
For my house and thy house no help shall we find
Save thy house and my house -- kin cleaving to...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
It was in the days of a gay British King
(In the old fashion'd custom of merry-making)
The Palace of Woodstock with revels did ring,
While they sang and carous'd--one and all:
For the monarch a plentiful treasury had,
And his Courtiers were pleas'd, and no visage was sad,
And the knavish and foolish with drinking were mad,
While they sat in the Banquetting hall.
Some talk'd...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Throughout my life I see
A guiding hand;
The pitfalls set for me
Were grimly planned.
But always when and where
They opened wide,
Someone who seemed to care
Stood by my side.
When up the pathway dark
I stumbled on,
Afar, ahead a spark
Of guidance shone.
When forked the tragic trail
And sad my plight,
My guardian without fail
Would lead me right.
How merciful a Mind
my life has planned!
Aye, though...Read more of this...
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