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Famous Tramping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...
 you; 
Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad. 

9
Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping? 
Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long?
Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for you, for
 reasons? 

They are justified—they are accomplish’d—they shall now be turn’d the other way also, to
 travel toward you thence; 
They shall now also march obediently eastward, for your sake, Li...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...hastly ranks—the armies dread that follow’d. 

6
(Pass—pass, ye proud brigades! 
So handsome, dress’d in blue—with your tramping, sinewy legs; 
With your shoulders young and strong—with your knapsacks and your muskets; 
—How elate I stood and watch’d you, where, starting off, you march’d!

Pass;—then rattle, drums, again! 
Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes! 
For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering army! 
Swarming, trailin...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...d ye shall be near me by land or sea,
And for your loyalty towards me your mother I'll reward;
When all on a sudden the tramping of horses was heard. 

Then the King heard voices he knew full well,
But what had fetched his friends there he couldn't tell;
'Twas Edward his brother and Lord Douglas, with one hundred and fifty men,
That had travelled far, to find their King, o'er mountain and glen. 

And when they met they conversed on the events of the day,
Then the King unto th...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...fiend for such a hell -- 
And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the "curlew's call" -- 
And the lone sundowner tramping ever onward thro' it all! 

I am back from up the country -- up the country where I went 
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent; 
I have left a lot of broken idols out along the track, 
Burnt a lot of fancy verses -- and I'm glad that I am back -- 
I believe the Southern poet's dream will not be realised 
Till the plains are ...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is beesomd from the door
And comfort crowns the cottage scenes
Gilt holly wi its thorny pricks
And yew and box wi berrys small
These deck the unusd ...Read more of this...
by Clare, John



...d cheerless domes! 
The Dawn! My spirit to its spirit thrills. 
Almost the mighty city is asleep, 
No pushing crowd, no tramping, tramping feet. 
But here and there a few cars groaning creep 
Along, above, and underneath the street, 
Bearing their strangely-ghostly burdens by, 
The women and the men of garish nights, 
Their eyes wine-weakened and their clothes awry, 
Grotesques beneath the strong electric lights. 
The shadows wane. The Dawn comes to New York. 
And I go darkly...Read more of this...
by McKay, Claude
...ore. 

I saw the dimpling river pass 
And be the sky's blue looking-glass; 
The dusty roads go up and down 
With people tramping in to town. 

If I could find a higher tree 
Farther and farther I should see, 
To where the grown-up river slips 
Into the sea among the ships, 

To where the road on either hand 
Lead onward into fairy land, 
Where all the children dine at five, 
And all the playthings come alive....Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...'t he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
 thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
 man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
 face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.
...t for. And a light.
Have we a piece of candle if the lamp
And oil are buried out of reach?”
Again
The house was full of tramping, and the dark,
Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.
A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,
To which they set it true by eye; and then
Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,
So much too light and airy for their strength
It almost seemed to come ballooning up,
Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.
“A fit!” said one, an...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...you light, and your billy you boil, 
There is comfort and peace in the bowl of your clay 
Or the yarn of a mate who is tramping that way. 

But beware of the town -- there is poison for years 
In the pleasure you find in the depths of long beers; 
For the bushman gets bushed in the streets of a town, 
Where he loses his friends when his cheque is knocked down; 
He is right till his pockets are empty, and then -- 
He can hump his old bluey up country again....Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...rn youths, 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, 
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O
 pioneers! 

4
 Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers! 

5
 All the past we leave behind; 
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, 
Fresh and strong the world...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ned me of a face that I might see 
From a bitter cup reflected in the wretched days to be. 

. . . . . 

I suppose he's tramping somewhere where the bushmen carry swags, 
Cadging round the wretched stations with his empty tucker-bags; 
And I fancy that of evenings, when the track is growing dim, 
What he `might have been and wasn't' comes along and troubles him....Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...am 
of pebbles and earth
and the empty spade gleams clear in the moonlight, then is rammed 
again
into the black earth. Tramping of feet. Men 
and horses.
Squeaking of wheels.
"Whoa! Ready, Jim?"
"All ready."
Something falls, settles, is still. Suicides 
have no coffin.
"Give us the stake, Jim. Now."
Pound! Pound!
"He'll never walk. Nailed to the ground."
An ash stick pierces his heart, if it buds the 
roots will hold him.
He is a part of the earth now, clay to clay. Overhead...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...h something heightened, enriched, enlarged, 
That lends a light to their lusty brows 
And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, 
These are the men that have taken vows, 
These are the hardy, the flower, the elite, -- 
These are the men that are moved no more 
By the will to traffic and grasp and store 
And ring with pleasure and wealth and love 
The circles that self is the center of; 
But they are moved by the powers that force 
The sea forever to ebb and rise, 
That ...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...lilies,
Saying, "Here Is Hiawatha!
Hiawatha with his hunters!"
Then they heard a cry above them,
Heard a shouting and a tramping,
Heard a crashing and a rushing,
And the water round and o'er them
Sank and sucked away in eddies,
And they knew their dam was broken.
On the lodge's roof the hunters
Leaped, and broke it all asunder;
Streamed the sunshine through the crevice,
Sprang the beavers through the doorway,
Hid themselves in deeper water,
In the channel of the streamlet;
Bu...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...Armor's clang or war-steed champing
     Trump nor pibroch summon here
          Mustering clan or squadron tramping.
     Yet the lark's shrill fife may come
          At the daybreak from the fallow,
     And the bittern sound his drum
          Booming from the sedgy shallow.
     Ruder sounds shall none be near,
     Guards nor warders challenge here,
     Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing,
     Shouting clans or squadrons stamping.'
     XXXII...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...n the harvest moon,
And passed a-tiptoe up and down,
Murmuring, to a fitful tune,
How I have followed, night and day,
A tramping of tremendous feet,
And saw where this old tympan lay
Deserted on a doorway seat,
And bore it to the woods with me;
Of some inhuman misery
Our married voices wildly trolled.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.

I sang how, when day's toil is done,
Orchil shakes out her long dark hair
That hides away the dying sun...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...er,
Kicking and screaming, while many of them did smother,
Owing to the heavy pressure of the entangled mass,
That were tramping o'er one another as they lay on the grass. 

The scene was indescribable, and sickening to behold,
To see the mass of innocent brutes lying stiff and cold,
And the moaning cries of them were pitiful to hear,
Likewise the cries of the dying men that lay wounded in the rear. 

Then General McNeill ordered his men to form in solid square,
Whilst deafen...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...e sheep are travelling for the grass, and travelling very slow; 
Tey may be at Mundooran now, or past the Overflow, 
Or tramping down the black-soil flats across by Waddiwong; 
But all those little country towns would send the letter wrong. 
The mailman, if he's extra tired, would pass them in his sleep; 
It's safest to address the note to 'Care of Conroy's sheep,' 
For five and twenty thousand head can scarcely go astray, 
You write to 'Care of Conroy's sheep along the Castl...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...g fiend for such a hell -- 
And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the curlew's call -- 
And the lone sundowner tramping ever onward through it all! 

I am back from up the country, up the country where I went 
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent; 
I have shattered many idols out along the dusty track, 
Burnt a lot of fancy verses -- and I'm glad that I am back. 
I believe the Southern poets' dream will not be realised 
Till the plains are ir...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry