Famous Wandered Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

A Bronze Head

by William Butler Yeats
 Here at right of the entrance this bronze head,
Human, superhuman, a bird's round eye,
Everything else withered and mummy-dead.
What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky
(Something may linger there though all else die;)
And finds there nothing to make its tetror less
Hysterica passio of its own emptiness?

No dark tomb-haunter once; her form all full
As though with magnanimity of light,
Yet a most gentle...Read more of this...

The New Helen

by Oscar Wilde
 Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World's...Read more of this...

Metro North

by Mark Doty
 Over the terminal,
 the arms and chest
 of the god

brightened by snow.
 Formerly mercury,
 formerly silver,

surface yellowed
 by atmospheric sulphurs
 acid exhalations,

and now the shining
 thing's descendant.
 Obscure passages,

dim apertures:
 these clouded windows
 show a few faces

or some empty car's
 filmstrip of lit flames
 --remember them

from school,
 how they were supposed
 to teach us something?--

waxy light hurrying
 inches away...Read more of this...

Earendil

by J R R Tolkien
 Earendil was a mariner
that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled
in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair,
of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow was fashioned like a swan
and light upon her banners laid.

In panolpy of ancient kings,
in chained rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm...Read more of this...

The Piano (Notebook Version)

by D. H. Lawrence
 Somewhere beneath that piano's superb sleek black
Must hide my mother's piano, little and brown with the back
That stood close to the wall, and the front's faded silk, both torn
And the keys with little hollows, that my mother's fingers had worn.
Softly, in the shadows, a woman is singing to me
Quietly, through the years I have crept back to see
A child...Read more of this...

Kotri, by the River

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   At Kotri, by the river, when the evening's sun is low,
   The waving palm trees quiver, the golden waters glow,
   The shining ripples shiver, descending to the sea;
   At Kotri, by the river, she used to wait for me.

   So young, she was, and slender, so pale with wistful...Read more of this...

The Lover And The Moon

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A lover whom duty called over the wave,
[Pg 30]With himself communed: "Will my love be true
If left to herself? Had I better not sue
Some friend to watch over her, good and grave?
But my friend might fail in my need," he said,
"And I return to find love dead.
Since friendships fade like the flow'rs of June,
I will leave her in...Read more of this...

Blueberries

by Robert Frost
 "You ought to have seen what I saw on my way 
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day: 
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, 
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum 
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come! 
And all ripe together, not some of them green 
And some of them ripe!...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Lamentation

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
Jealous of their faithful friendship,
And their noble words and actions,
Made at length a league against them,
To molest them and destroy them.
Hiawatha, wise and wary,
Often said to Chibiabos,
"O my brother! do not leave me,
Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!"
Chibiabos, young and heedless,
Laughing shook his coal-black...Read more of this...

In Back Of The Real

by Allen Ginsberg
 railroad yard in San Jose 
 I wandered desolate 
in front of a tank factory 
 and sat on a bench 
near the switchman's shack. 

A flower lay on the hay on 
 the asphalt highway 
--the dread hay flower 
 I thought--It had a 
brittle black stem and 
 corolla of yellowish dirty 
spikes like Jesus' inchlong 
...Read more of this...

As One Who Having Wandered All Night Long

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 AS one who having wandered all night long
In a perplexed forest, comes at length
In the first hours, about the matin song,
And when the sun uprises in his strength,
To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees,
Gazing afar before him, many a mile
Of falling country, many fields and trees,
And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean's smile:

I, O Melampus, halting,...Read more of this...

Do You Remember Once . .

by Alan Seeger
 Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, 
The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays 
And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places, 
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais? 


The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters 
Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned. 
Out of the starry...Read more of this...

From Us She wandered now a Year

by Emily Dickinson
 From Us She wandered now a Year,
Her tarrying, unknown,
If Wilderness prevent her feet
Or that Ethereal Zone

No eye hath seen and lived
We ignorant must be --
We only know what time of Year
We took the Mystery....Read more of this...

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils; 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of...Read more of this...

Looking into a Face

by Robert Bly
Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body 
Bringing fish up near the sun 
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!

I have wandered in a face for hours 
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born 
Existing like a light around the body
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon....Read more of this...

The City of the Dead XX

by Kahlil Gibran
 Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe. 

I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops. 

I commenced analyzing man's mission, but could conclude...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait At 28

by David Berman
 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...

An Evening Of Poetry

by Barry Tebb
 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet...Read more of this...

Translations: Dante - Inferno Canto XXVI

by Alan Seeger
 Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea 
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee 
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. 
So noble were the five I found to dwell 
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me 
And no great praise is thine; but if it be 
That truth unveil in...Read more of this...

The Towers of Time

by G K Chesterton
 Under what withering leprous light
The very grass as hair is grey,
Grass in the cracks of the paven courts
Of gods we graved but yesterday.
Senate, republic, empire, all
We leaned our backs on like a wall
And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid--
Can it be these that waver and fall?
And what is this like a ghost returning,
A dream grown strong...Read more of this...

Hide and Seek

by Henry Van Dyke
 All the trees are sleeping, all the winds are still,
All the flocks of fleecy clouds have wandered past the hill;
Through the noonday silence, down the woods of June,
Hark, a little hunter's voice comes running with a tune.
"Hide and seek!
"When I speak,
"You must answer me:
"Call again,
"Merry men,
"Coo-ee, coo-ee, coo-ee!"

Now I hear his footsteps, rustling through the grass:
Hidden in my leafy...Read more of this...

John Rouat the Fisherman

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Margaret Simpson was the daughter of humble parents in the county of Ayr,
With a comely figure, and face of beauty rare,
And just in the full bloom of her womanhood,
Was united to John Rouat, a fisherman good. 

John's fortune consisted of his coble, three oars, and his fishing-gear,
Besides his two stout boys, John and James, he loved most dear.
And no...Read more of this...

The Fool Errant

by Amy Lowell
 The Fool Errant sat by the highway of life
And his gaze wandered up and his gaze wandered down,
A vigorous youth, but with no wish to walk,
Yet his longing was great for the distant town.
He whistled a little frivolous tune
Which he felt to be pulsing with ecstasy,
For he thought that success always followed desire,
Such a very superlative fool was he.
A...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

Amaryllis

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Once, when I wandered in the woods alone, 
An old man tottered up to me and said, 
“Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made 
For Amaryllis.” There was in the tone 
Of his complaint such quaver and such moan
That I took pity on him and obeyed, 
And long stood looking where his hands had laid 
An...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Wandered poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace