Famous Way Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Way poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous way poems. These examples illustrate what a famous way poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...ace, the formation of the Constitution,
The separate States, the simple, elastic scheme, the immigrants,
The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and always sure and impregnable,
The unsurvey’d interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers;
Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,
Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost
parts;
Surrounding the noble characte...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...14
One Sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away.
There's only one recorded,
But both belong to me.
One came the road that I came—
And wore my last year's gown—
The other, as a bird her nest,
Builded our hearts among.
She did not sing as we did—
It was a different tune—
Herself to her a music
As Bumble bee of June.
Today is far from Childhood—
But up and down the hills...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...How far is it to Heaven?
As far as Death this way --
Of River or of Ridge beyond
Was no discovery.
How far is it to Hell?
As far as Death this way --
How far left hand the Sepulchre
Defies Topography....Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...uried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the winds and seas,
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.---I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr'd...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for f...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...alf my life behind me lay,
I wandered from the straight lost path afar.
Through the great dark was no releasing way;
Above that dark was no relieving star.
If yet that terrored night I think or say,
As death's cold hands its fears resuming are.
Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell,
The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours forgot,
I turn my tale to that which next befell,
When the dawn opened, and the night was not.
The hollowed blackn...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...otive!
To hear the hiss of steam—the merry shriek—the steam-whistle—the laughing
locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds—the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and all through the forenoon.
O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!
The saddle—the gallop—the pressure upon the seat—the coo...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...better after seeing.—
I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,
Brother Meserve. You know to find your way
Out through the shed.”
“I guess I know my way,
I guess I know where I can find my name
Carved in the shed to tell me who I am
If it don’t tell me where I am. I used
To play—”
“You tend your horses and come back.
Fred Cole, you’re going to let him!”
“Well, aren’t you?
How can you help yourself?”
“I called him Brother.
Why did I call hi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ore perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance—always substance and increase,
always sex;
Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail—learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is
so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, b...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...ey
To be an English king.
For earthquake swallowing earthquake
Uprent the Wessex tree;
The whirlpool of the pagan sway
Had swirled his sires as sticks away
When a flood smites the sea.
And the great kings of Wessex
Wearied and sank in gore,
And even their ghosts in that great stress
Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,
With the lords that died in Lyonesse
And the king that comes no more.
And the God of the Golden Dragon
Was dumb upon his throne,
And the lord ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects;—he had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...be noble men that hide their graces,
True England's blood, her ancient glory's stay,
By tales of fame diverted on their way
Home from the rule of oriental races.
Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes
And motion delicate, but swift to fire
For honour, passionate where duty lies,
Most loved and loving: and they quickly tire
Of Florence, that she one day more denies
The embrace of wife and son, of sister or sire.
18
Where San Miniato's convent from the sun
At fore...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...
Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled.
Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy,
The heart-love of a child!
Away, fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days--
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!
PREFACE
If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on t...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...p; And Johnny makes the noise he loves, And Betty listens, glad to hear it. Away she hies to Susan Gale: And Johnny's in a merry tune, The owlets hoot, the owlets purr, And Johnny's lips they burr, burr, burr, And on he goes beneath the moon. His steed and he right well agree, For of this pony there's a rumour, That should...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...nce now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?
Proverbs of Hell.
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, bree...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...s in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenour of my waking dream.
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to & fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, yet so
Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier.--
Old age ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...est man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be something worse. I don't think that there is much more to say at present.
QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS
P.S. — It is possible that some readers may object, in these ob...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a re...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...e
Among tall towers, the taller.
I'm grateful to their builders -- so be gone
Their sadness and their worry, go away,
Early from here I can see the dawn
And here triumphant lives the sun's last ray.
And frequently into my room's window
The winds from northern seas begin to blow
And pigeon from my palms eats wheat..
The pages that I did not complete
Divinely light she is and calm,
Will finish Muse's suntanned arm.
x x x
Just like a co...Read more of this...
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