Famous Voyage Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Voyage poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous voyage poems. These examples illustrate what a famous voyage poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Neruda, Pablo
...ss, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ober
He took me with him into the Maine woods,
Where, by the shore of a primeval lake,
With woods all round it, and a voyage away
From anything wearing clothes, he had reared somehow
A lodge, or camp, with a stone chimney in it,
And a wide fireplace to make men forget
Their sins who sat before it in the evening,
Hearing the wind outside among the trees
And the black water washing on the shore.
I never knew the meaning of October
Until I went with Asher to that pla...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ld
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months' voyage--how prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman's list
Of things he calls convenient: so they are!
An India screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! s...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...he time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.
Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That k...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...My thirst for the world's praises: nothing base,
No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace
The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar'd--
Though now 'tis tatter'd; leaving my bark bar'd
And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope
Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,
To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Beh...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ded or their wives--
So might she keep the house while he was gone.
Should he not trade himself out yonder? go
This voyage more than once? yea twice or thrice--
As oft as needed--last, returning rich,
Become the master of a larger craft,
With fuller profits lead an easier life,
Have all his pretty young ones educated,
And pass his days in peace among his own.
Thus Enoch in his heart determined all:
Then moving homeward came on Annie pale,
Nursing the sickly babe, he...Read more of this...
by
Tagore, Rabindranath
...rney takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,
and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,
and one has to wander through all the outer wo...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...m the west,
Wines from the south, and spices from the east;
From Gambo gold, and from the Ganges gems--
Take a short voyage underneath the Thames,
Once a deep river, now with timber floored,
And shrunk, least navigable, to a ford.
Now (nothing more at Chatham left to burn),
The Holland squadron leisurely return,
And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles,
To Ruyter's triumph lead the captive Charles.
The pleasing sight he often does prolong:
Her masts erect, t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead. ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ice and prime
Of those Heaven-warring champions could be found
So hardy as to proffer or accept,
Alone, the dreadful voyage; till, at last,
Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake:--
"O Progeny of Heaven! Empyreal Thrones!
With reason hath deep silence and demur
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
Our prison stron...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.
(A worship new, I sing;
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours!
You engineers! you architects, machinists, your!
You, not for trade or transportation only,
But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul.)
4
Passage to India!
Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain,
I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open’d,
I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van;
...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions.
7
O boating on the rivers!
The voyage down the Niagara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
steamers,
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
raftsmen
with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook their supper at
evening.
O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...of
masts;
The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion’d houses and barns;
The remember’d print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods,
The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it—the outset anywhere,
The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,
The be...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...ainst his pipping sounds a trumpet cried
67 Celestial sneering boisterously. Crispin
68 Became an introspective voyager.
69 Here was the veritable ding an sich, at last,
70 Crispin confronting it, a vocable thing,
71 But with a speech belched out of hoary darks
72 Noway resembling his, a visible thing,
73 And excepting negligible Triton, free
74 From the unavoidable shadow of himself
75 That lay elsewhere around him. Severance
76 Was clear.Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...
"We should all of us grieve, as you well may believe,
If you never were met with again--
But surely, my man, when the voyage began,
You might have suggested it then?
"It's excessively awkward to mention it now--
As I think I've already remarked."
And the man they called "Hi!" replied, with a sigh,
"I informed you the day we embarked.
"You may charge me with murder--or want of sense--
(We are all of us weak at times):
But the slightest approach to a false prete...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...rmities,
Our being had no onward auguries,
What then were this great love of ours to say
For launching other lives to voyage again
A little farther into time and pain,
A little faster in a futile chase
For a kingdom and a power and a Race
That would have still in sight
A manifest end of ashes and eternal night?
Is this the music of the toys we shake
So loud,—as if there might be no mistake
Somewhere in our indomitable will?
Are we no greater than the noise we make
A...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...,
That every wight with great devotioun
Should pray to Christ, that he this marriage
Receive *in gree*, and speede this voyage. *with good will, favour*
The day is comen of her departing, --
I say the woful fatal day is come,
That there may be no longer tarrying,
But forward they them dressen* all and some. *prepare to set out*
Constance, that was with sorrow all o'ercome,
Full pale arose, and dressed her to wend,
For well she saw there was no other end.
Alas! w...Read more of this...
by
Atwood, Margaret
...The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe....Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...rushy Fen.
Then Woodcocks, o'er the fluctuating Main,
That glimmers to the Glimpses of the Moon,
Stretch their long Voyage to the woodland Glade:
Where, wheeling with uncertain Flight, they mock
The nimble Fowler's Aim. -- Now Nature droops;
Languish the living Herbs, with pale Decay:
And all the various Family of Flowers
Their sunny Robes resign. The falling Fruits,
Thro' the still Night, forsake the Parent-Bough,
That, in the first, grey, Glances of the Dawn,
...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...a secret fountain.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides.
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay.
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
'Tis said she first was changed into a vapor;
And then into a cloud,--such clouds as flit
(Like splendor-...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Voyage poems.