Famous Route Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Route poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous route poems. These examples illustrate what a famous route poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ight, within the ancient brugh of Ayr,
By whim inspir’d, or haply prest wi’ care,
He left his bed, and took his wayward route,
And down by Simpson’s 1 wheel’d the left about:
(Whether impell’d by all-directing Fate,
To witness what I after shall narrate;
Or whether, rapt in meditation high,
He wander’d out, he knew not where or why:)
The drowsy Dungeon-clock 2 had number’d two, and Wallace Tower 3 had sworn the fact was true:
The tide-swoln firth, with sullen-sounding roar,
T...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...A MARCH in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building;
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building;
’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads—’tis now an impromptu
hos...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Along the route of this river,
with a little luck, we shall chance upon
our brothers' fortune, hidden with that cold smile
reserved for discreet bankers unmindful of the hydra
growing fiery mornings from our discontent
Wealth was always fashionable, telluric,
not honor pristine and profound.
In blasphemous glee, they raise to God's lips
those cups filled with ...Read more of this...
by
Cheney-Coker, Syl
...wedding feast all over again.
24
The cobbled hill past the Mansions led nowhere,
The buses ran empty, then the route closed.
I returned again and again in friends’ cars,
Now alone, on foot, again and again.
25
Come Whitsuntide the tally-men grew fat:
The poorest kids turned out in new blue
Worsted suits and matching caps, socks in
Scarlet plaid and mirror-shiny shoes so
When that special Sunday came they never
Missed a door to knock and say,
“Something ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can dis...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?
If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...up love pupates
but soon a cloud knocked pristine sex aback
(i had to learn the hard way nothing's easy)
i went my own route off the sanctioned track
and came distraught - in fact distinctly queasy
without permission (both nonchalant and breezy)
i sailed from bed to have a pee (or worse)
and got locked in - and drew that nurse's curse
not only hers but all the fussing staff's
for daring such a voyage in my state
whose heart just then was not a bag of laughs
did i not unders...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...ry to me as cracked and parched -
condemned ignored made mock of
shoved in wilderness by those
who've gone the gilded route (mapped out
by ego and a driving need to claim
best prick with a capital pee)
it's being roomed with the said poem
coming back and back to the same
felt heartbeat having its way with words
absorbing the strains and promises
that make the language opt for paths
no other voice would go - shifting
a dull stone and knowing what bright
creature this insti...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...d surmised.
He said that Whoppers wuz a man he 'd never heerd about,
But he mought have carried papers on a Jarsey City route;
And then he recollected hearin' Mr. Laffan say
That he'd fired a man named Whoppers fur bein' drunk one day,
Which, with more likker underneath than money in his vest,
Had started on a freight-train fur the great 'nd boundin' West,
But further information or statistics he had none
Uv the man who'd "worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun."
We dropped th...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...s,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers!
21
O you daughters of the west!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers!
22
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep—you have done your work;)
Soon I hear you comi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...he main
I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago.
Perhaps the best.
I searched for years and wrote en route
‘Bridge Over the Aire’ after that vision and that voice
“I am here. I am waiting”. I followed every lead
Margaret Gardiner last heard of in the Falmouth’s
Of Leeds 9, early fifties. Barry Tebb your friend from then
Would love to hear from you.”
The sole reply
A mis-directed estimate for papering a bungalow
In Penge. I nearly came unhinged as ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...For the wonderful way that he fed his sheep, and the dodges and tricks he tried.
He would lose his way on a Main Stock Route, and stray to the squatters' grass;
He would come to a run with the boss away, and swear he had leave to pass;
And back of all and behind it all, as well the squatters knew,
If he had to fight, he would fight all day, so long as his sheep got through:
But this is the story of Stingy Smith, the owner of Hard Times Hill,
And the way that he chanced ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...lowing each sentence to trail off in confusion.
Those who have visited Scusi, the capital city,
Report that the railway-route from Schuldig passes
Through country best described as unrelieved.
Sheep are the national product. The faint inscription
Over the city gates may perhaps be rendered,
"I'm afraid you won't find much of interest here."
Census-reports which give the population
As zero are, of course, not to be trusted,
Save as reflecting the natives' flustered insistence
...Read more of this...
by
Wilbur, Richard
...is own death,
waiting for him.
So I will go now
without old age or disease,
wildly but accurately,
knowing my best route,
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years,
never asking, “Where are we going?”
We were riding (if I'd only known)
to this.
Dear friend,
please do not think
that I visualize guitars playing
or my father arching his bone.
I do not even expect my mother's mouth.
I know that I have died before—
once in November, once in June.
How stra...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...wrapped at all) -- if
I stir the wintered ground-leaves
up from the paths, nimbly, into a sheet of sun,
into an escape-route-width of sun, mildly gelatinous where wet, though mostly
crisp,
fluffing them up a bit, and up, as if to choke the singularity of sun
with this jubilation of manyness, all through and round these passers-by --
just leaves, nothing that can vaporize into a thought,
no, a burning bush's worth of spidery, up-ratcheting, tender-cling leaves,
oh if -- the ...Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
...d I nearly said:
"Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard,"
but the ***** look through me like I was dead.
A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on.
The driver size up my bags with a grin:
"This time, Shabine, like you really gone!"
I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in
the back seat and watch the sky burn
above Laventille pink as the gown
in which the woman I left was sleeping,
and I look in the rearview and see a man
exactly like me, and the man was weeping
...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...full of rubies.
They danced until morning and the sun came up
naked and angry and so they returned
by the same strange route. The soldier
went forward through the dormitory and into
his waiting chair to feign his druggy sleep.
That morning the soldier, his eyes fiery
like blood in a wound, his purpose brutal
as if facing a battle, hurried with his answer
as if to the Sphinx. The shoes! The shoes!
The soldier told. He brought forth
the silver leaf, the diamond the size of a p...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...Traveller sorrow all become decrease Stay here again what this I remember the temple, this route I've travelled before, I recall the bridge as I cross it again. It seems the hills and rivers have been waiting, The flowers and willows all are selfless now. The field is sleek and vivid, thin mist shines, On soft sand, the sunlight's colour shows it's late. All the traveller's sorrow fades away, What better place to rest than this?...Read more of this...
by
Fu, Du
...
On this lady and now on that lokinge,
Wher-so she were of toune, or of with-oute:
And up-on cas bifel, that thorugh a route
His eye perced, and so depe it wente,
Til on Criseyde it smoot, and ther it stente.
And sodeynly he wax ther-with astoned,
And gan hire bet biholde in thrifty wyse:
'O mercy, god!' thoughte he, 'wher hastow woned,
That art so fair and goodly to devyse?'
Ther-with his herte gan to sprede and ryse,
And softe sighed, lest men mighte him here,
And caught...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...erte,
Whan she forgoth hir owene swete herte?
This Troilus, in wyse of curteisye,
With hauke on hond, and with an huge route
Of knightes, rood and dide hir companye,
Passinge al the valey fer with-oute,
And ferther wolde han riden, out of doute,
Ful fayn, and wo was him to goon so sone;
But torne he moste, and it was eek to done.
And right with that was Antenor y-come
Out of the Grekes ost, and every wight
Was of it glad, and seyde he was wel-come.
And Troilus, al nere hi...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
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