Travel poems
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Italy : 27. The Pilgrim
© Samuel Rogers
It was an hour of universal joy.
The lark was up and at the gate of heaven,
Singing, as sure to enter when he came;
The butterfly was basking in my path,
The Child Of The Islands - Summer
© Caroline Norton
I.
FOR Summer followeth with its store of joy;
That, too, can bring thee only new delight;
Its sultry hours can work thee no annoy,
For a Statue of AEsculapius
© Theocritus
Far as Miletus travelled Paean's son;
There to be guest of Nicias, guest of one
Who heals all sickness; and who still reveres
Him, for his sake this cedarn image rears.
The sculptor's hand right well did Nicias fill;
And here the sculptor lavished all his skill.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
© Oscar Wilde
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby gray;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
The Candidate
© Charles Churchill
This poem was written in , on occasion of the contest between the
Earls of Hardwicke and Sandwich for the High-stewardship of the
Banana Trees by Joseph Stanton: American Life in Poetry #119 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
I'm especially attracted to poems that describe places I might not otherwise visit, in the manner of good travel writing. I'm a dedicated stay-at-home and much prefer to read something fascinating about a place than visit it myself. Here the Hawaii poet, Joseph Stanton, describes a tree that few of us have seen but all of us have eaten from.
Banana Trees
They are tall herbs, really, not trees,
though they can shoot up thirty feet
if all goes well for them. Cut in cross
Fog
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Magically awakened to a strange, brown night
The streets lie cold. A hush of heavy gloom
Dulls the noise of the wheels to a murmur dead:
Near and sudden the passing figures loom;
Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This Sycamore, oft musical with bees,
Such tents the Patriarchs loved! O long unharmed
Paradise Lost : Book X.
© John Milton
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar
© Robert Duncan
I
The light foot hears you and the brightness begins
god-step at the margins of thought,
quick adulterous tread at the heart.
The Hunting of the Snark
© Lewis Carroll
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
from The Bridge: Southern Cross
© Hart Crane
Whatever callfalls vainly on the wave.
O simian Venus, homeless Eve,
Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve
Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever;
Finally to answer all within one grave!
Life
© Henry Van Dyke
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy:
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy,
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,
My heart will keep the courage of the quest,
And hope the road's last turn will be the best.
Thyrsis: A Monody, to Commemorate the Author's Friend, Arthur Hugh Clough
© Matthew Arnold
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
Coole Park 1929
© William Butler Yeats
I MEDITATE upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
from The Vanity of Human Wishes
© Henry James Pye
Yet still one genral cry the skies assails,
And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales,
Few know the toiling statesmans fear or care,
Th insidious rival and the gaping heir.
