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Famous Roadside Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...on the ground when Christ was born,
And the Virgin Mary His mother felt very forlorn
As she lay in a horse's stall at a roadside inn,
Till Christ our Saviour was born to free us from sin.

Oh! think of the Virgin Mary as she lay
In a lowly stable on a bed of hay,
And angels watching O'er her till Christ was born,
Therefore all the people should respect Christmas morn.

The way to respect Christmas time
Is not by drinking whisky or wine,
But to sing praises to God on Christmas...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz



...the bear
(must tame the hart
and wear the bear).

And maybe make an image
of my wandering, a little
image—shrine by the
roadside to signify
to traveler that I live
here in the wilderness
awake and at home....Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...d and swift.
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, earily shattered rose.
Come...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with ...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...ask’d anything of America? 
What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons; 
By the roadside others disdainfully toss’d. 

13
Rhymes and rhymers pass away—poems distill’d from foreign poems pass away, 
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes; 
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soul of literature;
America justifies itself, give it time—no disguise can deceive it, or conceal from
 it—it is impassive eno...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



..., each in his nature."
And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,
 Yuan Jang being his elder,

or Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
 be receiving wisdom.
And Kung said
 "You old fool, come out of it,
"Get up and do something useful."
 And Kung said
"Respect a child's faculties
"From the moment it inhales the clear air,
"But a man of fifty who knows nothing
 Is worthy of no respect."
And "When the prince has gathered about him
"All the savants and artists, his riche...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra
...
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.



XXVI.
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags, 
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
Sung by their tribes from immemorial time; 
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.



XXVII.
So flawless was the union of ea...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...lies on the other side of silence'
 -- George Eliot, Middlemarch


Dead dandelions, bald as drumsticks,
swaying by the roadside

like Hare Krishna pilgrims
bowing to the Juggernaut.

They have given up everything.
Gold gone and their silver gone,

humbled with dust, hollow,
their milky bodies tan

to the colour of annas.
The wind changes their identity:

slender Giacomettis, Doré's convicts,
Rodin's burghers of Calais

with five bowed heads
and the weight of serrated keys . ...Read more of this...
by Raine, Craig
...meadow.
Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse,
Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the roadside,
Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary.
Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown
Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses.
Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard,
There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the ha...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill
The ma?tres d'h?tel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.

You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,
I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.R.O.
Essentially, I integrate the current export drive
And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.

For vital off-the-record work - that's talking tr...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...rted  
Come to visit me once more; 

He the young and strong who cherished 
Noble longings for the strife  
By the roadside fell and perished 15 
Weary with the march of life! 

They the holy ones and weakly  
Who the cross of suffering bore  
Folded their pale hands so meekly  
Spake with us on earth no more! 20 

And with them the Being Beauteous  
Who unto my youth was given  
More than all things else to love me  
And is now a saint in heaven. 

With a s...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who wal...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
..., myself, what did I make of it?

The voices coming into my head

Welcoming kin, alive or dead, my eyes

Jerking to the roadside magpie,

Its white tail-bar doing a hop, skip and jump....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...cried with bursting heart,
And voice of agony and pain. 
So one, whose ticket's marked "Return", [8]
When to the lonely roadside station
He flies in fear and perturbation,
Thinks of his home--the hissing urn--
Then runs with flying hat and hair,
And, entering, finds to his despair
He's missed the very last train. [9]

Too long it were to tell of each conjecture
Of chicken suicide, and poultry victim,
The deadly frown, the stern and dreary lecture,
The timid guess, "perhaps so...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...forget for a moment, 
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams 
and in my wakeful hours. 

When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, 
when I spread my bed low in the dust, 
let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me 
---let me not forget a moment, 
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams 
and in my wakeful hours. 

When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound 
and the laughter there is loud, 
let me ever feel that I have no...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath
...the summer sun shone hot 
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, 

And she heard the little spring brook fall 
Over the roadside, through a wall, 

In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein; 

And, gazing down with timid grace, 
She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls; 

The weary wheel to a spinet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned, 

And for him who sat by the chimney...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...Over the border
 And the gates
 Of the town closed as the town awoke.

 A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
 Blackbirds and the sun of October
 Summery
 On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
 To the rain wringing
 Wind blow cold
 In the wood faraway under me.

 Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a ...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...still!"
"I saw it just as plain as a white plate,"
She said, "as the light on the dashboard ran
Along the bushes at the roadside--a man's face.
You must have seen it too."
"I didn't see it.
Are you sure----"
"Yes, I'm sure!"
"--it was a face?"
"Joel, I'll have to look. I can't go in,
I can't, and leave a thing like that unsettled.
Doors locked and curtains drawn will make no difference.
I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
A...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; 
and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; 
and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds 
while we busily went on our way and paid no heed. 

We sang no glad songs nor played; 
we went not to the village for barter; 
we spoke not a word nor smiled; 
we lingered not on the way. 
We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by. 

The sun rose to the mid sky and ...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath
...
The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn,-- 
And every inch of garden ground 
Paced by the blessed feet around, 
From the roadside to the brook 
Whereinto he loved to look. 
Step the meek fowls where erst they ranged; 
The wintry garden lies unchanged; 
The brook into the stream runs on; 
But the deep-eyed boy is gone. 

On that shaded day, 
Dark with more clouds than tempests are, 
When thou didst yield thy innocent breath 
In birdlike heavings unto death, 
Night came, and Nat...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things