Travel poems
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Swift's Epitaph
© William Butler Yeats
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
The Wild Old Wicked Man
© William Butler Yeats
Because I am mad about women
I am mad about the hills,'
Said that wild old wicked man
Who travels where God wills.
A Man Young And Old: I. First Love
© William Butler Yeats
Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.
Politics
© William Butler Yeats
'In our time the destiny of man prevents its meanings
in political terms.' -- Thomas Mann.
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
Sonnet On An Alpine Night
© Dorothy Parker
Who humbly followed Beauty all her ways,
Begging the brambles that her robe had passed,
Crying her name in corridors of stone,
That day shall know his weariedest of days -
When Beauty, still and suppliant at last,
Does not suffice him, once they are alone.
Recurrence
© Dorothy Parker
We shall have our little day.
Take my hand and travel still
Round and round the little way,
Up and down the little hill.
Hearthside
© Dorothy Parker
Half across the world from me
Lie the lands I'll never see-
I, whose longing lives and dies
Where a ship has sailed away;
I, that never close my eyes
But to look upon Cathay.
Convalescent
© Dorothy Parker
How shall I wail, that wasn't meant for weeping?
Love has run and left me, oh, what then?
Dream, then, I must, who never can be sleeping;
What if I should meet Love, once again?
Travels With John Hunter
© Les Murray
We who travel between worlds
lose our muscle and bone.
I was wheeling a barrow of earth
when agony bayoneted me.
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches
© Mary Oliver
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives -
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?
Aunt Leaf
© Mary Oliver
Needing one, I invented her -
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.
Marengo
© Mary Oliver
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
An Afternoon In The Stacks
© Mary Oliver
Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Travelling Bohemians
© Charles Baudelaire
The prophetic tribe of the ardent eyes
Yesterday they took the road, holding their babies
On their backs, delivering to fierce appetites
The always ready treasure of pendulous breasts.
The White Bees
© Henry Van Dyke
Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus,
youngest of the shepherds,
Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees."
Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.
The Gentle Traveller
© Henry Van Dyke
Through many a land your journey ran,
And showed the best the world can boast:
Now tell me, traveller, if you can,
The place that pleased you most."
Light Between the Trees
© Henry Van Dyke
Long, long, long the trail
Through the brooding forest-gloom,
Down the shadowy, lonely vale
Into silence, like a room
Hudson's Last Voyage
© Henry Van Dyke
June 22, 1611 THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard
These waters, greater grown than any since
Arrival
© Henry Van Dyke
Across a thousand miles of sea, a hundred leagues of land,
Along a path I had not traced and could not understand,
I travelled fast and far for this, -- to take thee by the hand.
