Famous Travellers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ah! Sun-Flower

...Ah Sun-flower! weary of time.
Who countest the steps of the Sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire.
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go....Read more of this...
by Blake, William


Autobiography At An Air-Station

...Delay, well, travellers must expect 
Delay. For how long? No one seems to know. 
With all the luggage weighed, the tickets checked, 
It can't be long... We amble too and fro, 
Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets 
And tea, unfold the papers. Ought we to smile, 
Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats 
You're best alone. Friendship is not worth while. 

...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Beowulf (Old English)

...your folk and home, lest hence ye fare
suspect to wander your way as spies
in Danish land. Now, dwellers afar,
ocean-travellers, take from me
simple advice: the sooner the better
I hear of the country whence ye came.”



IV

To him the stateliest spake in answer;
the warriors’ leader his word-hoard unlocked: --
“We are by kin of the clan of Geats,
and Hygelac’s own hearth-fellows we.
To folk afar was my father known,
noble atheling, Ecgtheow named.
Full of wi...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Churchills Grave

...rs his memory tasked
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered—"Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought,—and do we rip
The veil of Immortality? and crave
I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

...ets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore) 
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is 
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is ...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John


Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...margin,
Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on the greensward,
Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slumbered.
Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar.
Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet-flower and the grapevine
Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob,
On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending,
Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted from blossom to blossom.
Such was the vision Evangeline...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

...ave left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Golfre Gothic Swiss Tale

...g was a Goatherds poor;
Yet she his heart delighted;
Their little hovel open stood,
Beside a lonesome frowning wood.
To travellers--benighted.

Yet oft, at midnight when the Moon
Its dappled course was steering,
The Castle bell would break their sleep,
And ZORIETTO slow would creep--
To bar the wicket--fearing!

What did she fear? O! dreadful thought!
The Moon's wan lustre, streaming;
The dim grey lamps, the crashing sound,
The lonely Bittern--shrieking round
The roof,--with ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

In the Greenest of our Valleys

...und about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh --but smile no more....Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

Meditations In Time Of Civil War

...seroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.

Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My bodily heirs may find,
To exa...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Religio Laici

...Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is reason to the soul; and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere
So pale grows reason at religion's sight:
So dies, and so di...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue

...as the day!
Oft, when my little ones at play
Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
Or if they listened to some tale
Of travellers, or of fairyland,
When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand
Flashed on their faces,--if they heard
Or thought they heard upon the stair
His footstep, the suspended word 
Died on my lips; we all grew pale;
The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear
If it thought it heard its father near;
And my two wild boys would near my knee
Cling, cowed and...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat

...en playing cards
He will supervise them all, more or less.
Down the corridor he paces and examines all the faces
Of the travellers in the First and the Third;
He establishes control by a regular patrol
And he'd know at once if anything occurred.
He will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking
And it's certain that he doesn't approve
Of hilarity and riot, so the folk are very quiet
When Skimble is about and on the move.
You can play no pranks with Skimblesh...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

...re we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pi...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

The Haunted Palace

...d round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh- but smile no more....Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

The Idiot Boy

...sp; As ever was in Christendom.   The owls have hardly sung their last,  While our four travellers homeward wend;  The owls have hooted all night long,  And with the owls began my song,  And with the owls must end.   For while they all were travelling home,  Cried Betty, "Tell us Johnny, do,  Where all this long night you have been,  What you have heard, what you have ...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Scholar Gypsy

...g for the spark from heaven to fall.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
Have I not passed thee on the wooden bridge,
Wrapped in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge?
And thou hast climbed the hill,
And gained the white brow of the Cumner range;
Turned once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall— 
Then sought thy straw ...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Voices in the Dream (Ryton Firs)

...
Such as can draw the year's
First fragrance from the sap of cherry wood
Or from the leaves of budless violets;
And travellers in lanes
Catch the hot tawny smell
Reynard's damp fur left as he sneakt marauding

Across from gap to gap:
And in the larch woods on the highest boughs
The long-eared owls like grey cats sitting still
Peer down to quiz the passengers below.

Light has killed the winter and all dark dreams.
Now winds live all in light,
Light has come dow...Read more of this...
by Abercrombie, Lascelles

The Wood

...this wood­ 
So total is the solitude, 
We safely may delay. 

These massive roots afford a seat, 
Which seems for weary travellers made. 
There rest. The air is soft and sweet 
In this sequestered forest glade, 
And there are scents of flowers around, 
The evening dew draws from the ground;
How soothingly they spread ! 

Yes; I was tired, but not at heart; 
No­that beats full of sweet content, 
For now I have my natural part 
Of action with adventure blent; 
Cast forth on the...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte

The Wood

...this wood­ 
So total is the solitude, 
We safely may delay. 

These massive roots afford a seat, 
Which seems for weary travellers made. 
There rest. The air is soft and sweet 
In this sequestered forest glade, 
And there are scents of flowers around, 
The evening dew draws from the ground;
How soothingly they spread ! 

Yes; I was tired, but not at heart; 
No­that beats full of sweet content, 
For now I have my natural part 
Of action with adventure blent; 
Cast forth on the...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte

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