Travel poems
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A Ballad of Dreamland
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.
A Desolaltion
© Allen Ginsberg
Now mind is clear
as a cloudless sky.
Time then to make a
home in wilderness.
Through a Glass Darkly
© Arthur Hugh Clough
What we, when face to face we see
The Father of our souls, shall be,
John tells us, doth not yet appear;
Ah! did he tell what we are here!
Where Lies The Land To Which The Ship Would Go
© Arthur Hugh Clough
Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
Giant Toad
© Elizabeth Bishop
I am too big. Too big by far. Pity me.
My eyes bulge and hurt. They are my one great beauty, even
so. They see too much, above, below. And yet, there is not much
to see. The rain has stopped. The mist is gathering on my skin
The Imaginary Iceberg
© Elizabeth Bishop
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.
The Man-Moth
© Elizabeth Bishop
Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for "mammoth."
Here, above,
cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight.
Questions of Travel
© Elizabeth Bishop
"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?
The Moose
© Elizabeth Bishop
From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,
One Art
© Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Wayside Flowers
© William Allingham
Pluck not the wayside flower,
It is the traveller's dower;
A thousand passers-by
Its beauties may espy,
Down on the Shore
© William Allingham
Down on the shore, on the sunny shore!
Where the salt smell cheers the land;
Where the tide moves bright under boundless light,
And the surge on the glittering strand;
Soliloquy in Circles
© Ogden Nash
Being a father
Is quite a bother.You are as free as air
With time to spare,You're a fiscal rocket
With change in your pocket,And then one morn
The Old Women Of The Ocean
© Pablo Neruda
To the solemn sea the old women come
With their shawls knotted around their necks
With their fragile feet cracking.
The Road Not Taken
© Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
Five Letters To My Mother
© Nizar Qabbani
Good morning sweetheart.
Good morning my Saint of a sweetheart.
Laughter And Tears IX
© Khalil Gibran
As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.
When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say under a tree where I could see them without being seen.
Desesperanto
© Marilyn Hacker
After Joseph RothParce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi.
Montaigne, De L'amitiëThe dream's forfeit was a night in jail
and now the slant light is crepuscular.
Papers or not, you are a foreigner
The White Cliffs
© Alice Duer Miller
Yet I have loathed those voices when the sense
Of what they said seemed to me insolence,
As if the dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.
The Crooked Stick
© Elinor Wylie
First Traveller: What's that lying in the dust?
Second Traveller: A crooked stick.
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust to arithmetic?
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle?
