Famous Pathways Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pathways poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pathways poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pathways poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
James Whitcomb Riley
I
But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay
In golden blots,
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots.
My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And, warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth.
And, cool and sweet,
My naked feet
Found...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
They sing their dearest songs --
He, she, all of them -- yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face....
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!
They clear the creeping moss --
Elders and juniors -- aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat....
Ah, no; the years, the...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
"Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to...Read more of this...
by
John Burnside
Behind faces and gestures
We remain mute
And spoken words heavy
With what we ignore or keep silent
Betray us
I dare not speak for mankind
I know so little of myself
But the Landscape
I see as a reflection
Is also a lie stealing into
My words I speak without remorse
Of this image of myself
And mankind my unequaled torment
I speak of Desert without repose
Carved by relentless winds
Torn up...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Does pleasant spring return once more?
Does earth her happy youth regain?
Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er;
Soft brooklets burst their icy chain:
Upon the blue translucent river
Laughs down an all-unclouded day,
The winged west winds gently quiver,
The buds are bursting from the spray;
While birds are blithe on every tree;
The Oread from the mountain-shore
Sighs, "Lo! thy flowers come back to thee--
Thy child,...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.
By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born—conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming
While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
To the heart-light of the hill.
Its sounds and sights were forsaking
The world as they faded in sleep,
When they heard a music breaking
Out from the heart-light deep.
It ran where the rill in its flowing
Under the star-light gay,
With wonderful colour...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
As I lie at rest on a patch of clover
In the Western Park when the day is done.
I watch as the wild black swans fly over
With their phalanx turned to the sinking sun;
And I hear the clang of their leader crying
To a lagging mate in the rearward flying,
And they fade away in the...Read more of this...
by
Jean Ingelow
A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)
To strive—and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star—and could not hail
With them its deep-set light.
Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Wreathe in a garland the corn's golden ear!
With it, the Cyane [31] blue intertwine
Rapture must render each glance bright and clear,
For the great queen is approaching her shrine,--
She who compels lawless passions to cease,
Who to link man with his fellow has come,
And into firm habitations of peace
Changed the rude tents' ever-wandering home.
Shyly in the mountain-cleft
Was the Troglodyte concealed;
And the...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In this noble ring to-day
Let my warning shame ye!
Listen to my solemn voice,--
Seldom does it name ye.
Many a thing have ye intended,
Many a thing have badly ended,
And now I must blame ye.
At some moment in our lives
We must all repent us!
So confess, with pious trust,
All your sins momentous!
Error's crooked pathways shunning.
Let us, on the straight road running,
Honestly content us!
Yes!...Read more of this...
by
John Burnside
Behind faces and gestures
We remain mute
And spoken words heavy
With what we ignore or keep silent
Betray us
I dare not speak for mankind
I know so little of myself
But the Landscape
I see as a reflection
Is also a lie stealing into
My words I speak without remorse
Of this image of myself
And mankind...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
------
What we sing in company
Soon from heart to heart will fly.
-----
THE Gesellige Lieder, which I have angicisled
as above, as several of them cannot be called convivial songs, are
separated by Goethe from his other songs, and I have adhered to
the same arrangement. The Ergo bibamus is a well-known drinking
song in Germany, where it enjoys vast popularity.
ON...Read more of this...
by
Paul Eluard
I. Soon
Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest
Of all of my ways of being
To be trusting is the best
Grass pushes up snow
Like the stone of a tomb
But I sleep within the storm
And awaken eyes bright
Slowness, brief time ends
Where all streets must pass
Through my innermost...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light.
Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
I WOULD I could weave in
The colour, the wonder,
The song I conceive in
My heart while I ponder,
And show how it came like
The magi of old
Whose chant was a flame like
The dawn’s voice of gold;
Whose dreams followed near them
A murmur of birds,
And ear still could hear them
Unchanted in words.
...Read more of this...
by
Henry Kendall
RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines,
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines;
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air;
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud,
Where the fading twilight lingers, when...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Two are the pathways by which mankind can to virtue mount upward;
If thou should find the one barred, open the other will lie.
'Tis by exertion the happy obtain her, the suffering by patience.
Blest is the man whose kind fate guides him along upon both!...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Naked you are simple as one of your hands;
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round.
You've moon-lines, apple pathways
Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.
Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba;
You've vines and stars in your hair.
Naked you are spacious and yellow
As summer in a golden church.
Naked you are tiny as one of your nails;
Curved, subtle, rosy,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile,
Alike, while I have holiday.
Why wilt thou go, my harassed heart,
What thought, what scene invites thee now?
What spot, or near or far,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?
There is a spot, mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But if the dreary...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
How blind the toil that burrows like the mole,
In winding graveyard pathways underground,
For Browning's lineage! What if men have found
Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll
Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul?
Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned
Through all the world, -- the poets laurel-crowned
With wreaths from which the autumn takes no toll.
The...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink...Read more of this...
by
Charles Sorley
I have not brought my Odyssey
With me here across the sea;
But you'll remember, when I say
How, when they went down Sparta way,
To sandy Sparta, long ere dawn
Horses were harnessed, rations drawn,
Equipment polished sparkling bright,
And breakfasts swallowed (as the white
Of eastern heavens turned to gold) -
The dogs barked, swift farewells were told.
The sun springs up, the horses neigh,
Crackles the whip...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Alas! the days of the crimson phlox and of the proud roses that brightened its gates are far away, but however faded and withered it may be—what matters!—I love our garden still with all my heart.
Its distress is sometimes dearer and sweeter to me than was its gladness in the burning summer days. Oh! the last perfume slowly rendered up...Read more of this...
by
Jean Delville
Becalmed the profane noise of the crowd.
Toward the risen Moon, the symbolic Bronzes
Curve, in the blue night, their antique nudity
In the sphinx-like majesty of attitudes.
A dream of incense symphonies the lustral Lake,
Enchanted by the sidereal presence of Swans,
Elegiacally swooning their silver-pale lines,
Beneath the sacred music of astral infinitude.
Drunken with silence, the aching lawns
Grow languid in the brightness of calm reveries;
Amid...Read more of this...
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