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Famous Stations Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...tions;
An’ ye wha leather rax an’ draw,
 Of a’ denominations;
Swith to the Ligh Kirk, ane an’ a’
 An’ there tak up your stations;
Then aff to Begbie’s in a raw,
 An’ pour divine libations
 For joy this day.


Curst Common-sense, that imp o’ hell,
 Cam in wi’ Maggie Lauder; 1
But Oliphant 2 aft made her yell,
 An’ Russell 3 sair misca’d her:
This day Mackinlay 4 taks the flail,
 An’ he’s the boy will blaud her!
He’ll clap a shangan on her tail,
 An’ set the bairns to daud her
...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



..., who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt --
So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they learnt --

"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'
"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?"

The ar...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...hanging there was dust in my lines 
i aimed for song and there was not an eye without tears 

i marked the fourteen stations of the cross 
but your death has killed my verse 
each day i wake on the hour to mourn 
and i feel like a wanderer in a city without lights 
passion flees in the fog and words crumble at my touch 
and my throat feels like a concrete floor 
the power of tears has deserted me 

i walk through the streets of this forbidding town 
searching for...Read more of this...
by Oguibe, Olu
...ow Fairy Liquid for whiskey.
Not yet the moment of your arrival in taxis
at daring destinations, or your being alone at stations
with the skirts of your fashionable clothes flapping
and no money for the telephone.

Not yet the moment when I can give you nothing
so well-folded it fits in an envelope — 
a dull letter you won't reread.
Not yet the moment of your assimilation
in that river flowing westward: rivers of clothes,
of dreams, an accent unlike my own
saying to someone I...Read more of this...
by Dunmore, Helen
...ll he quaffs
Receives ambrosia, nectar and honey.

He plays with the wind, chats with the vapors,
Deliriously sings the stations of the cross;
And the Spirit who follows him in his capers
Cries at his joy like a bird in the forest.

Those whom he longs to love look with disdain
And dread, strengthened by his tranquillity,
They seek to make him complain of his pain
So they may try out their ferocity.

In the bread and wine destined for his lips,
They mix in cinders and spit wi...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles



...he steered
Parker into a cab and drove the silent miles
beside him while the bright world
unfurled around them: filling stations, stands
of fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets
from Mexico and the Philippines. It was all
so actual and Western, it was a new creation
coming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker
someone later called "glad," though that day
I would have said silent, "the silent music
of Charlie Parker." Howard said nothing.
He paid the driver an...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...tart counting 
till Sonny goes down. 
Now Liston is disappearing from view, 
The crowd is going frantic, 
But radar stations have picked him up, 
Somewhere over the Atlantic. 
Who would have thought 
when they came to the fight? 
That they'd witness the launching 
of a human satellite. 
Yes the crowd did not dream, 
when they put up the money, 
That they would see 
a total eclipse of the Sonny. 

Muhammad Ali Quotes Poems

Ding! Ali comes out to meet Frazier ...Read more of this...
by Ali, Muhammad
...east run free. The weary gods, 
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand, 
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope 
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them; 
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die 
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong 
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last, 
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side. 
Take as your model th...Read more of this...
by Lewis, C S
...ancient nations,
Law, life, and light, on the world's way,
The very God of very day,
The sun-god; from their star-like stations
Far down the night in disarray
Fled, crowned with fires of tribulations,
The suns of sunless years, whose light
And life and law were of the night.

The naked kingdoms quenched and stark
Drave with their dead things down the dark,
Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,
Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,
Hopeless; their hands that tou...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...e train passed the forest's tortured icons,
ths floes clanging like freight yards, then the spires
of frozen tears, the stations screeching steam,
he drew them in a single winters' breath
whose freezing consonants turned into stone.

He saw the poetry in forlorn stations
under clouds vast as Asia, through districts
that could gulp Oklahoma like a grape,
not these tree-shaded prairie halts but space
so desolate it mocked destinations.

Who is that dark child on the parapets
of...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...e bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ll of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!...Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...n,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it last...Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P
...ts planeloads folded up in the sleeves. 
Watched grappling hooks trawl through the late-night waters. 
Watched bands of stations scan unable to ascertain.
There are fingers, friend, that never grow sluggish.
They crawl up the coat and don't miss an eyehole.
Glinting in kitchenlight.
Supervised by the traffic god.
Hissed at by grassblades that wire-up outside
their stirring rhetoric — this is your land, this is my my — 

 *

You do understanding, don't you, by looking?
The coa...Read more of this...
by Graham, Jorie
...ld.


"'Twere vain to paint, in vision'd show,
The mighty nothings done by Howe;
What towns he takes in mortal fray,
As stations whence to run away;
What triumphs gain'd in conflict warm,
No aid to us, to them no harm;
For still th' event alike is fatal,
Whate'er success attend the battle,
Whether he vict'ry gain or lose it,
Who ne'er had skill enough to use it.
And better 'twere, at their expense,
T' have drubb'd him into common sense,
And waked, by bastings on his rear,
Th'...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...appy Isle? What strength, what art, can then 
Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe, 
Through the strict senteries and stations thick 
Of Angels watching round? Here he had need 
All circumspection: and we now no less 
Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we send 
The weight of all, and our last hope, relies." 
 This said, he sat; and expectation held 
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared 
To second, or oppose, or undertake 
The perilous attempt. But all sat mute, 
Ponder...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...one's sex be known in so many words.
The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings, the absence
Of churches or comfort-stations, have given observers
An odd impression of ostentatious meanness,
And it must be said of the citizens (muttering by
In their ratty sheepskins, shying at cracks in the sidewalk)
That they lack the peace of mind of the truly humble.
The tenor of life is careful, even in the stiff
Unsmiling carelessness of the border-guards
And douaniers, who admit, wh...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard
...by ten thousand pound.
He owns, and hopes it is no sin,
He ne'er was partial to his kin;
He thought it base for men in stations
To crowd the Court with their relations;
His country was his dearest mother,
And ev'ry virtuous man his brother;
Through modesty or awkward shame
(For which he owns himself to blame),
He found the wisest man he could,
Without respect to friends or blood;
Nor ever acts on private views,
When he hath liberty to choose.

The sharper swore he hated play...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan
...e air with sighing. 
Ah! deluded Shawondasee!
Thus the Four Winds were divided 
Thus the sons of Mudjekeewis 
Had their stations in the heavens, 
At the corners of the heavens; 
For himself the West-Wind only 
Kept the mighty Mudjekeewis....Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...hute and past: 
And there through twenty posts of telegraph 
They flashed a saucy message to and fro 
Between the mimic stations; so that sport 
Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere 
Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled 
And stumped the wicket; babies rolled about 
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids 
Arranged a country dance, and flew through light 
And shadow, while the twangling violin 
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead 
The broad ambro...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things