Travel poems
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The Sale of Saint Thomas
© Lascelles Abercrombie
Captain Well, I hope so.
There's threatening in the weather. Have you a mind
To hug your belly to the slanted deck,
Like a louse on a whip-top, when the boat
Spins on an axlie in the hissing gales?
Hymn to Love
© Lascelles Abercrombie
We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As théou, Léove, were the déep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:
From The Souls Travelling
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
God, God!
With a childs voice I cry,
Weak, sad, confidingly
God, God!
Cheerfulness Taught By Reason
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I THINK we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To Gnedich
© Alexander Pushkin
With Homer you conversed alone for days and nights,
Our waiting hours were passing slowly,
And shining you came down from the mysterious heights
And brought to us your tablets holy -
The Task: Book II, The Time-Piece (excerpts)
© William Cowper
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
The Human Face
© Paul Eluard
Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest
Of all of my ways of being
To be trusting is the best
I Cannot be Known
© Paul Eluard
Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights
Musketaquid
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
The Forerunners
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides.
Their step is forth, and, ere the day,
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Etienne de la Boéce
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadow-like, o'er hill and hollow,
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.
Threnody
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
Dirge
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?
Blight
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths,
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
The Snow-Storm
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
Initial Love
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
He palmistry can understand,
Imbibing virtue by his hand
As if it were a living root;
The pulse of hands will make him mute;
With all his force he gathers balms
Into those wise thrilling palms.
Answers
© Mark Strand
Why did you travel?
Because the house was cold.
Why did you travel?
Because it is what I have always done between sunset and sunrise.
Giving Myself Up
© Mark Strand
I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
That V.C.
© Andrew Barton Paterson
He lay as flat as any fish;
His nose had worn a little furrow;
He only had one frantic wish,
That like an ant-bear he could burrow.
The Federal Bus Conductor and the Old Lady
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Now, don't go trudgin' on alone, but get aboard the trap;
That basket, labelled "Capital", you take it in your lap!
It's nearly time we made a start, so let's 'ave no more talk:
You 'urry up and get aboard, or else stop out and walk.
We've got a flag; we've got a band; out 'orses travels fast;
Ho! Right away, Bill! Let 'em go! The old 'un's come at last!
