Famous Track Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Track poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous track poems. These examples illustrate what a famous track poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
When the boys come out from Lac Labiche in the lure of the early Spring,
To take the pay of the "Hudson's Bay", as their fathers did before,
They are all a-glee for the jamboree, and they make the Landing ring
With a whoop and a whirl, and a "Grab your girl", and a rip and a skip and a roar.
For the...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Bring me a quart of colonial beer
And some doughy damper to make good cheer,
I must make a heavy dinner;
Heavily dine and heavily sup,
Of indigestible things fill up,
Next month they run the Melbourne Cup,
And I have to dream the winner.
Stoke it in, boys! the half-cooked ham,
The rich ragout and the charming cham.,...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The boys had come back from the races
All silent and down on their luck;
They'd backed 'em, straight out and for places,
But never a winner they's struck.
They lost their good money on Slogan,
And fell most uncommonly flat
When Partner, the pride of the Bogan,
Was beaten by Aristocrat.
And one said, "I move that instanter...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The fields of youth are filled with flowers,
The wine of youth is strong:
What need have we to count the hours?
The summer days are long.
But soon we find to our dismay
That we are drifting down
The barren slopes that fall away
Towards the foothills grim and grey
That lead to Old Man's Town.
And marching...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
This is the story the stockman told
On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright;
The moon rose up like a globe of gold
And flooded the plain with her mellow light.
We watched the cattle till dawn of day
And he told me the story of Mongrel Grey.
He was a knock-about station hack,
Spurred and walloped, and...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The Boastful Crow and the Laughing Jack
Were telling tales of the outer back:
"I've just been travelling far and wide,
At the back of Bourke and the Queensland side;
There isn't a bird in the bush can go
As far as me," said the old black crow.
"There isn't a bird in the bush can fly
A course...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellowly, and despite divergence,
Friends interblent us.
"Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome--
Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;
Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded."
So self-communed I.
Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,
Fair not fairest, good not best of her...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.
Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, " I wait for
you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears
and hours ache with songs unsung."
It says, "Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through
the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered
fruits of the year decay, but I am the...Read more of this...
by
Bernadette Geyer
Train. Distant Train. Praise the glorious distance of Train.
Dogs bark, reply to the mournful echo of Train's whistle. Train looks back, keeps moving. Train carries its boxcars of secrets further and further away (and even further still) from those who profess to love Train, but who do not run after him. Eyes brimmed with glassy reflections of Train.
To watch...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
at the track today,
Father's Day,
each paid admission was
entitled to a wallet
and each contained a
little surprise.
most of the men seemed
between 30 and 55,
going to fat,
many of them in walking
shorts,
they had gone stale in
life,
flattened out....
in fact, damn it, they
aren't even worth writing
about!
why am I doing
this?
these don't even
deserve a death bed,
these little walking
whales,
only there are so
many of
them,
in the urinals,
in...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Runs to no compass point
But starts within the human heart
Where travellers in twos may go
As for a while it winds beside
A man-made road then veers aside
We met at a cross-roads once and journeyed
Together for a while across a moor
And then on horseback sadly you waved adieu....Read more of this...
by
John Ashbery
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?
That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:
you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way
a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?
and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down, the
tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches,
or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah -...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but...Read more of this...
by
Tony Harrison
Your bed's got two wrong sides. You life's all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can't stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi'out your mam's white sauce!
Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back.
Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronaries and cataracts.)
Ah've allus liked...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in
Under...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
With eyes that searched in the dark,
Peering along the line,
Stood the grim Scotsman, Hector Clark,
Driver of "Forty-nine".
And the veldt-fire flamed on the hills ahead,
Like a blood-red beacon sign.
There was word of a fight to the north,
And a column too hardly pressed,
So they started the Highlanders forth.
Heedless of food or rest....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
"Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn," says he.
"I can't," says I, "because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
To Tripoli and Trebizond and Timbuctoo mayhap,
Or any magic name beyond I find upon the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
By our place in the midst of the furthest seas we were fated to stand alone -
When the nations fly at each other's throats let Australia look to her own;
Let her spend her gold on the barren west, let her keep her men at home;
For the South must look to the South for strength in the storm that is...Read more of this...
by
Henry Vaughan
1 I walk'd the other day, to spend my hour,
2 Into a field,
3 Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
4 A gallant flow'r;
5 But winter now had ruffled all the bow'r
6 And curious store
7 I knew there heretofore.
8 Yet I, whose search lov'd not to peep and peer
9 I' th' face of things,
10 Thought with my self,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas the old -- road -- through pain --
That unfrequented -- one --
With many a turn -- and thorn --
That stops -- at Heaven --
This -- was the Town -- she passed --
There -- where she -- rested -- last --
Then -- stepped more fast --
The little tracks -- close prest --
Then -- not so swift --
Slow -- slow...Read more of this...
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