Famous Wandering(A) Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Written On A Blank Space At The End Of Chaucers Tale Of The Flowre And The Lefe

by John Keats
 This pleasant tale is like a little copse:
The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white Simplicity!
What mighty power...Read more of this...

Story by Lalla-ji, the Priest

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   He loved the Plant with a keen delight,
     A passionate fervour, strange to see,
   Tended it ardently, day and night,
     Yet never a flower lit up the tree.

   The leaves were succulent, thick, and green,
     And, sessile, out of the snakelike...Read more of this...

397. Song—Wandering Willie (Revised Version)

by Robert Burns
 HERE awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
 Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame;
Come to my bosom, my ain only dearie,
 Tell me thou bring’st me my Willie the same.
Winter winds blew loud and cauld at our parting,
 Fears for my Willie brought tears in my e’e,
Welcome nowhSimmer, and welcome, my Willie,
 The Simmer to Nature, my Willie to me!


Rest,...Read more of this...

Unknown Bird

by W S Merwin
 Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before

one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else

and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before

where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening

it...Read more of this...

Om

by George William Russell
 FAINT grew the yellow buds of light
Far flickering beyond the snows,
As leaning o’er the shadowy white
Morn glimmered like a pale primrose.


Within an Indian vale below
A child said “OM” with tender heart,
Watching with loving eyes the glow
In dayshine fade and night depart.


The word which Brahma at his dawn
Outbreathes and endeth at his night,
Whose tide of sound so rolling on
Gives birth...Read more of this...

Wandering Singers

by Sarojini Naidu
 WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, 
Through echoing forest and echoing street, 
With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, 
All men are our kindred, the world is our home. 
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, 
The laughter and beauty of women long dead; 
The sword of old battles, the crown of...Read more of this...

Mont Blanc

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 (Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni)

1

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom -
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, - with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild...Read more of this...

396. Song—Wandering Willie

by Robert Burns
 HERE awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
 Now tired with wandering, haud awa hame;
Come to my bosom, my ae only dearie,
 And tell me thou bring’st me my Willie the same.
Loud blew the cauld winter winds at our parting;
 It was na the blast brought the tear in my e’e:
Now welcome the Simmer, and welcome my Willie,
 The Simmer to...Read more of this...

The Song Of Wandering Aengus

by William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire...Read more of this...

To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time

by William Butler Yeats
 Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old
In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
Come near, that no more blinded hy...Read more of this...

The Wandering Jew

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I saw by looking in his eyes 
That they remembered everything; 
And this was how I came to know 
That he was here, still wandering. 
For though the figure and the scene
Were never to be reconciled, 
I knew the man as I had known 
His image when I was a child. 

With evidence at every turn, 
I should have...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

by Conrad Aiken
 As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...

Mementos

by Charlotte Bronte
 ARRANGING long-locked drawers and shelves 
Of cabinets, shut up for years, 
What a strange task we've set ourselves ! 
How still the lonely room appears ! 
How strange this mass of ancient treasures, 
Mementos of past pains and pleasures; 
These volumes, clasped with costly stone, 
With print all faded, gilding gone; 

These fans of leaves, from Indian trees­ 
These...Read more of this...

The Antique To The Northern Wanderer

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Thou hast crossed over torrents, and swung through wide-spreading ocean,--
Over the chain of the Alps dizzily bore thee the bridge,
That thou might'st see me from near, and learn to value my beauty,
Which the voice of renown spreads through the wandering world.
And now before me thou standest,--canst touch my altar so holy,--
But art thou nearer to me, or am I...Read more of this...

Wandering at Morn

by Walt Whitman
 WANDERING at morn, 
Emerging from the night, from gloomy thoughts—thee in my thoughts, 
Yearning for thee, harmonious Union! thee, Singing Bird divine! 
Thee, seated coil’d in evil times, my Country, with craft and black dismay—with
 every
 meanness, treason thrust upon thee; 
—Wandering—this common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch’d,
 feeding
 its young,
(The singing thrush, whose tones of joy...Read more of this...

Roosters

by Elizabeth Bishop
 At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock

just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match 
from the broccoli patch,
flares,and all over town begins to catch.

Cries galore
come from the water-closet door,
from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

where...Read more of this...

The Exorcists

by Anne Sexton
 And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.

For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will...Read more of this...

The Stolen Child

by William Butler Yeats
 Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand. 

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The...Read more of this...

The Duties of an Aide-de-camp

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, some folk think vice-royalty is festive and hilarious, 
The duties of an A.D.C. are manifold and various, 
So listen, whilst I tell in song 
The duties of an aide-de-cong. 
Whatsoever betide 
To the Governor's side 
We must stick -- or the public would eat him -- 
For each bounder we see 
Says, "Just introduce me 
To His Lordship...Read more of this...

A Fence

by Carl Sandburg
 NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that
can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.
As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble
and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering
children looking for...Read more of this...

The Song And The Sigh

by Henry Lawson
 The creek went down with a broken song, 
'Neath the sheoaks high; 
The waters carried the song along, 
And the oaks a sigh. 

The song and the sigh went winding by, 
Went winding down; 
Circling the foot of the mountain high, 
And the hillside brown. 

They were hushed in the swamp of the Dead Man's Crime, 
Where the curlews...Read more of this...

A Prisoner in a Dungeon Deep

by Anne Bronte
 A prisoner in a dungeon deep
Sat musing silently;
His head was rested on his hand,
His elbow on his knee. 
Turned he his thoughts to future times
Or are they backward cast?
For freedom is he pining now
Or mourning for the past?

No, he has lived so long enthralled
Alone in dungeon gloom
That he has lost regret and hope,
Has ceased to mourn his doom.

He pines...Read more of this...

The Wandering Bard

by Thomas Moore
 What life like that of the bard can be -- 
The wandering bard, who roams as free 
As the mountain lark that o'er him sings, 
And, like that lark a music brings, 
Within him, where'er he comes or goes -- 
A fount that for ever flows! 
The world's to him like some playground, 
Where fairies dance their moonlight round;...Read more of this...

An Autumn Reverie

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Alas! Beautiful Summer now hath fled,
And the face of Nature doth seem dead, 
And the leaves are withered, and falling off the trees,
By the nipping and chilling autumnal breeze. 

The pleasures of the little birds are all fled,
And with the cold many of them will be found dead,
Because the leaves of the trees are scattered in the blast,
And makes...Read more of this...

The Death and Last Confession of Wandering Peter

by Hilaire Belloc
 When Peter Wanderwide was young
He wandered everywhere he would:
All that he approved was sung,
And most of what he saw was good.

When Peter Wanderwide was thrown
By Death himself beyond Auxerre,
He chanted in heroic tone
To priests and people gathered there:

"If all that I have loved and seen
Be with me on the Judgment Day,
I shall be saved the crowd between
From Satan and...Read more of this...

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