Famous Travels Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Travels poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous travels poems. These examples illustrate what a famous travels poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Yeats, William Butler
...thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.
She smiled and that transfigured me
And left me but a lout,
Maundering here, and maundering there,
Emptier of thought
Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
When the moon sails out....Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin--
An indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land's practitioners,
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cure--and I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt object--why have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wro...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...g woman married to a grim clergyman
Twenty-two years older than she:
She had her little innocent diversions, her little travels in Europe—
And once for scandal kissed the Pope's ring—
Perhaps her life was no emptier than other lives. Both parents
Swim in my blood and distort my thought but the old man's welcome....Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...t into the night.
It glitters icy, thin and plain,
And leads me down to Waterloo-
Into a warm electric train
Which travels sorry Surrey through
And crystal-hung, the clumps of pine
Stand deadly still beside the line....Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ape majestic, a vast shade
In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk
Of Memnon's image at the set of sun
To one who travels from the dusking East:
Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp
He utter'd, while his hands contemplative
He press'd together, and in silence stood.
Despondence seiz'd again the fallen Gods
At sight of the dejected King of day,
And many hid their faces from the light:
But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes
Among the brotherhood; and, at th...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)
As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift
Rings out the Dead Sea scale;
And, clapped in water till the triton dangles,
Strung by the flaxen whale-weed, from the hangman's raft,
Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial.
(Turn the sea-spindle lateral,
The grooved land rotating, that the stylus of lightning
Dazzle thi...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...r heart a throng
Of higher occupants, a richer zest,
Came tragic; passion not to be subdued,
And sorrow for her love in travels rude.
XXXII.
In the mid days of autumn, on their eves
The breath of Winter comes from far away,
And the sick west continually bereaves
Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay
Of death among the bushes and the leaves,
To make all bare before he dares to stray
From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel
By gradual decay from beauty fell,
***...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...back in fear
From what the future veils; but with a whole
And happy heart, that pays its toll
To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer.
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy:
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy,
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,
My heart will keep the courage of the quest,
And hope the road's last turn will be the best....Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...roaring whale,
Round the hall where runic Odin
Howls his war-song to the gale;
Save when adown the ravaged globe
He travels on his native storm,
Deflowering Nature's grassy robe,
And trampling on her faded form:-
Till light's returning lord assume
The shaft the drives him to his polar field,
Of power to pierce his raven plume
And crystal-covered shield.
Oh, sire of storms! whose savage ear
The Lapland drum delights to hear,
When frenzy with her blood-shot eye...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...the can. After two hours of
intimate and universal failure he went back to Missoula,
Montana.
The woman who travels with me discovered the best way
to catch the minnows. She used a large pan that had in its
bottom the dregs of a distant vanilla pudding. She put the
pan in the shallow water along the shore and instantly, hun-
dreds of minnows gathered around. Then, mesmerized by
the vanilla pudding, they swam like a children's crusade
into the pan...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...America forgot to tell me about it. I'm cer-
tain he knew. It must have slipped his mind.
The woman who travels with me had menstrual cramps.
She wanted to rest for a while, so I took the baby and my spin-
ning rod and went down to the Big Wood River. That's where
I met Trout Fishing in America.
I was casting a Super-Duper out into the river and letting
it swing down with the current and then ride on the water up
close to the shore. It f...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...sold at the auction-stand—the drunkard nods by the
bar-room stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves—the policeman travels his beat—the
gate-keeper marks who pass;
The young fellow drives the express-wagon—(I love him, though I do not know
him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race;
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young—some lean on their rifles,
some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his positio...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road—as many roads—as roads for traveling souls.
14
The Soul travels;
The body does not travel as much as the soul;
The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of
the
soul.
All parts away for the progress of souls;
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments,—all that was or is apparent upon this
globe
or
any globe, falls into niches and corners before the ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...
(38) The wandering life of the Arabs, Tartars, and Turkomans, will be found well detailed in any book of Eastern travels. That it possesses a charm peculiar to itself, cannot be denied. A young French renegado confessed to Chateaubriand, that he never found himself alone, galloping in the desert, without a sensation approaching to rapture, which was indescribable.
(39) "Jannat al Aden," the perpetual abode, the Mussulman paradise.
(40) A turban is c...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
... And still and mute, in wonder lost, All like a silent horse-man ghost, He travels on along the vale. And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep, A fierce and dreadful hunter he! Yon valley, that's so trim and green, In five months' time, should he be seen, A desart wilderness will be. Perhaps, with head and heels on fire, &...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...r perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.
And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book—
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gypsy-lore,
And roamed the world with that wi...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
... The little hedge-row birds That peck along the road, regard him not. He travels on, and in his face, his step, His gait, is one expression; every limb, His look and bending figure, all bespeak A man who does not move with pain, but moves With thought—He is insensibly subdued To settled quiet: he is one by whom All effort seems forgotten, on...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...e reckon'd
From our sun to its earth, as we can tell
How much time it takes up, even to a second,
For every ray that travels to dispel
The fogs of London, through which, dimly beacon'd,
The weathercocks are gilt some thrice a year,
If that the summer is not too severe;
LVI
I say that I can tell — 'twas half a minute;
I know the solar beams take up more time
Ere, pack'd up for their journey, they begin it;
But then their telegraph is less sublime,
And if they ran...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...We who travel between worlds
lose our muscle and bone.
I was wheeling a barrow of earth
when agony bayoneted me.
I could not sit, or lie down,
or stand, in Casualty.
Stomach-calming clay caked my lips,
I turned yellow as the moon
and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel
in a hospital where I met no one
so much was my liver now my dire
preo...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...unsels aid the sov'reign power
To save the nation every hour?
What scenes of evil he unravels
In satires, libels, lying travels!
Not sparing his own clergy-cloth,
But eats into it, like a moth!"
"His vein, ironically grave,
Exposed the fool and lashed the knave.
To steal a hint was never known,
But what he writ was all his own.
He never thought an honour done him
Because a duke was proud to own him;
Would rather slip aside and choose
To talk with wits in dirty shoes;...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Travels poems.