Famous Tracks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Voices in the Dream (Ryton Firs)

by Lascelles Abercrombie
Follow my heart, my dancing feet,
Dance as blithe as my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.

I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths...Read more of this...

A Parody on 'A Psalm of Life'

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Life is real, life is earnest, 
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting, 
Be our bills then sharpened well, 
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle, 
In the great barnyard of...Read more of this...

Love Is A Parallax

by Sylvia Plath
 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of...Read more of this...

Silence

by Billy Collins
 Now it is time to say what you have to say.
The room is quiet.
The whirring fan has been unplugged,
and the girl who was tapping
a pencil on her desktop has been removed.

So tell us what is on your mind.
We want to hear the sound of your foliage,
the unraveling of your tool kit,
your songs of loneliness,
your songs of hurt.

The trains are...Read more of this...

Australian Scenery

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Mountains 
A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go 
By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow 
And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below. 
A land where the hills keep watch and ward, silent and wide awake 
As those who sit by a dead campfire,...Read more of this...

The Mores

by John Clare
 Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following...Read more of this...

Success Comes To Cow Creek

by James Tate
 I sit on the tracks,
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants
none. It's been nine months
since I last listened
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.

When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the...Read more of this...

Railway Tracks

by Omer Tarin
Twice or thrice they crisscross
Across the level crossing
And the nettles cling 
Stubbornly to their sides
Spreading their displeasure
Upon the broken ridges
Of crumbling soil;

But the nettles cannot go
Where railway tracks lead-
Everywhere
And nowhere
All at once

Whistling into the night
With a longing
That pierces
Isolation.

----






(c) Omer Tarin. Pub ''Pasban Review'' Pakistan (1999) ...Read more of this...

On A Cape May Warbler Who Flew Against My Window

by Eamon Grennan
 She's stopped in her southern tracks
Brought haply to this hard knock
When she shoots from the tall spruce
And snaps her neck on the glass.

From the fall grass I gather her
And give her to my silent children
Who give her a decent burial
Under the dogwood in the garden.

They lay their gifs in the grave:
Matches, a clothes-peg, a coin;
Fire paper for her, sprinkle...Read more of this...

To An Old Mate

by Henry Lawson
 Old Mate! In the gusty old weather, 
When our hopes and our troubles were new, 
In the years spent in wearing out leather, 
I found you unselfish and true -- 
I have gathered these verses together 
For the sake of our friendship and you. 

You may think for awhile, and with reason, 
Though still with a kindly regret, 
That...Read more of this...

The Road to Gundagai

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The mountain road goes up and down 
From Gundagai to Tumut Town 
And, branching off, there runs a track 
Across the foothills grim and black, 

Across the plains and ranges grey 
To Sydney city far away. 

It came by chance one day that I 
From Tumut rode to Gundagai, 

And reached about the evening tide 
The crossing where the...Read more of this...

Deer Tracks

by Richard Brautigan
 Beautiful, sobbing 
high-geared fucking 
and then to lie silently 
like deer tracks in the 
freshly-fallen snow beside 
the one you love. 
That's all....Read more of this...

Noon

by Philip Levine
 I bend to the ground 
to catch 
something whispered, 
urgent, drifting 
across the ditches. 
The heaviness of 
flies stuttering 
in orbit, dirt 
ripening, the sweat 
of eggs. 
 There are 
small streams 
the width ofa thumb 
running in the villages 
of sheaves, whole 
eras of grain 
wakening on 
the stalks, a roof 
that breathes over 
my head. 
 Behind...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCII. I' ho pregato Amor, e nel riprego. HE PLEADS THE EXCESS OF HIS PASSION IN PALLIATION OF HIS FAULT.  Oft have I pray'd to Love, and still I pray,My charming agony, my bitter joy!That he would crave your grace, if consciouslyFrom the right path my guilty footsteps stray.That Reason,...Read more of this...

Closed Path

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I thought that my voyage had come to its end 
at the last limit of my power,---that the path before me was closed, 
that provisions were exhausted 
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. 

But I find that thy will knows no end in me. 
And when old words die out on the tongue, 
new...Read more of this...

A Disqualified Jockeys Story

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 You see, the thing was this way -- there was me, 
That rode Panopply, the Splendor mare, 
And Ikey Chambers on the Iron Dook, 
And Smith, the half-caste rider on Regret, 
And that long bloke from Wagga -- him that rode 
Veronikew, the Snowy River horse. 
Well, none of them had chances -- not a chance 
Among the lot,...Read more of this...

Brother Jonathans Lament

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 SHE has gone,-- she has left us in passion and pride,--
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe!

Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,
We can never forget that our hearts have been one,--
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name,
From the fountain...Read more of this...

All Night All Night

by Delmore Schwartz
 "I have been one acquainted with the night" - Robert Frost


Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird
Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and
 attitudes
The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read,
Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced
On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident.

Looked out at the night,...Read more of this...

he and the hilltown

by Rg Gregory
 when they look into his mind they find a hill town
somewhat surprised they go off to their learned books
outside (architecturally) he’d seems a little wind-blown
not special – a common sort of shackman by his looks
not the sure kind to want the sun to get its hooks
into his self-containment (his bunched-up notions)
thoughts crammed like the heads of ripened corn in...Read more of this...

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush

by Emily Dickinson
Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and...Read more of this...

Brumbys Run

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 It lies beyond the Western Pines 
Towards the sinking sun, 
And not a survey mark defines 
The bounds of "Brumby's Run". 

On odds and ends of mountain land, 
On tracks of range and rock 
Where no one else can make a stand, 
Old Brumby rears his stock. 

A wild, unhandled lot they are 
Of every shape and breed. 
They...Read more of this...

Epipsychidion (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Emily, 
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is...Read more of this...

Requiescam

by Barry Tebb
 (May I lie in peace)



Let there be grass and trees to blow

And fold me in their shadow

Branches to shake and leaves

Turn brown, fall and lie fallow.

Let there be moorlands swept by wind

And raked by rain, purple splashes of heather

In autumn and sturdy boulders our forefathers

Carved their names on, emerald and slippery with moss

And pebble-strewn sheep-tracks crossing ditch and dyke

Where...Read more of this...

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

by George (Lord) Byron
 Missolonghi, Jan. 22, 1824

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief,
Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled...Read more of this...

For Osip Mandelstam

by Anna Akhmatova
 And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.
And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crows
there’s a pale green dome there that glows,
dim in the sun-shrouded dust.
The field of heroes lingers in my thought,
Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground.
The frozen poplars, like glasses for a...Read more of this...

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