Travel poems
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Birthday (Autobiography)
© Robinson Jeffers
Seventy years ago my mother labored to bear me,
A twelve-pound baby with a big head,
Her first, it was plain torture. Finally they used the forceps
And dragged me out, with one prong
In my right eye, and slapped and banged me until I breathed.
I am not particularly grateful for it.
Psalm 63
© Isaac Watts
Great God, indulge my humble claim,
Thou art my hope, my joy, my rest;
The glories that compose thy name
Stand all engaged to make me blest.
Psalm 129
© Isaac Watts
Up from my youth, may Isr'el say,
Have I been nursed in tears;
My griefs were constant as the day,
And tedious as the years.
Hymn 78
© Isaac Watts
[Who is this fair one in distress,
That travels from the wilderness?
And pressed with sorrows and with sins,
On her beloved Lord she leans.
Hymn 28
© Isaac Watts
What mighty man, or mighty God,
Comes travelling in state,
Along the Idumean road,
Away from Bozrah's gate?
Hymn 158
© Isaac Watts
Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there;
But wisdom shows a narrower path,
With here and there a traveller.
Fata Morgana
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O sweet illusions of song
That tempt me everywhere,
In the lonely fields, and the throng
Of the crowded thoroughfare!
The White Man's Foot
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Hiawatha's Wooing
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Hiawatha And Mudjekeewis
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Out of childhood into manhood
Now had grown my Hiawatha,
Skilled in all the craft of hunters,
Learned in all the lore of old men,
The Three Kings
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.
The Song of Hiawatha: X
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"
Hiawatha's Childhood
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
To An Old Danish Song-book
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Welcome, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
Excelsior
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
I, In My Intricate Image
© Dylan Thomas
I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.
