Travel
AND
Place
From A Railway Carriage
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
London
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
Sept. 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Exile
I chose the place where I would rest
When death should come to claim me,
With the red-rose roots to wrap my breast
And a quiet stone to name me.
But I am laid on a northern steep
With the roaring tides below me,
And only the frosts to bind my sleep,
And only the winds to know me.
MARJORIE PICKTHALL
Symphony In Yellow
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
OSCAR WILDE
The Way Through The Woods
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few);
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods…
But there is no road through the woods.
RUDYARD KIPLING
Wenlock Edge
On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ‘twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
Today the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
A. E. HOUSMAN
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it in the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Home Thoughts, From Abroad
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England — now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray’s edge —
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
ROBERT BROWNING
My Heart’s In The Highlands
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birthplace of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.
ROBERT BURNS
A Niagara Landscape
Heavy with haze that merges and melts free
Into the measureless depth on either hand,
The full day rests upon the luminous land
In one long noon of golden reverie.
Now hath the harvest come and gone with glee.
The shaven fields stretch smooth and clean away,
Purple and green, and yellow, and soft grey,
Chequered with orchards. Farther still I see
Towns and dim villages, whose roof-tops fill
The distant mist, yet scarcely catch the view.
Thorold set sultry on its plateau’d hill,
And far to westward, where yon pointed towers
Rise faint and ruddy from the vaporous blue,
Saint Catharines, city of the host of flowers.
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
A Canadian Boat Song
Faintly as tolls the evening chime
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We’ll sing at St. Anne’s our parting hymn.
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near and the daylight’s past.
Why should we yet our sail unfurl?
There is not a breath the blue wave to curl.
But when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we’ll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near and the daylight’s past.
Utawas’ tide! this trembling moon
Shall see us float over thy surges soon.
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,
Oh, grant us cool heavens and favouring airs.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near and the daylight’s past.
THOMAS MOORE
A Psalm Of Montreal
Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room
The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall;
Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and set at naught,
Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth:
O God! O Montreal!
Beautiful by night and day, beautiful in summer and winter,
Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful
He preacheth gospel of grace to the skin of owls
And to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls:
O God! O Montreal!
When I saw him I was wroth and I said, ‘O Discobolus!
Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men!
What doest thou here, how camest thou hither, Discobolus,
Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls?’
O God! O Montreal!
And I turned to the man of skins and said unto him, ‘O thou man of skins,
Wherefore hast thou done thus to shame the beauty of the Discobolus?’
But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skins
And he answered, ‘My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon.’
O God! O Montreal!
‘The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar
He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs;
I, Sir, am a person of most respectable connections
My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon.’
O God! O Montreal!
Then I said, ‘O brother-in-law to Mr. Spurgeon’s haberdasher,
Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls,
Thou callest trousers ‘pants’, whereas I call them ‘trousers’
Therefore thou art in hell-fire and may the Lord pity thee!’
O God! O Montreal!
‘Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of Hellas, The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon’s haberdashery to the gospel of Discobolus?’
Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty saying, ‘The Discobolus hath no gospel,
But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon.’
O God! O Montreal!
SAMUEL BUTLER
Home Thoughts, From The Sea
Nobly, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
‘Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?’ — say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
ROBERT BROWNING
Adlestrop
Yes. I remember Adlestrop —
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop — only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
EDWARD THOMAS
North Labrador
A land of leaning ice
Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,
Flings itself silently
Into eternity.
‘Has no one come here to win you,
Or left you with the faintest blush
Upon your glittering breasts?
Have you no memories, O Darkly Bright?’
Cold-hushed, there is only the shifting of moments
That journey toward no Spring —
No birth, no death, no time nor sun
In answer.
HART CRANE
Midnight On The Great Western
In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
And the roof-lamp’s oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
Or whence he came.
In the band of his hat the journeying boy
Had a ticket stuck; and a string
Around his neck bore the key of his box,
That twinkled gleams of the lamp’s sad beams
Like a living thing.
What past can be yours, O journeying boy
Towards a world unknown,
Who calmly, as if incurious quite
On all at stake, can undertake
This plunge alone?
Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,
Our rude realms far above,
Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
This region of sin that you find you in,
But are not of?
THOMAS HARDY
On A Rhine Steamer
Republic of the West
Enlightened, free, sublime,
Unquestionably best
Production of our time,
The telephone is thine,
And thine the Pullman car,
The caucus, the divine
Intense electric star.
To thee we likewise owe
The venerable names
Of Edgar Allan Poe,
And Mr. Henry James.
In short it’s due to thee,
Thou kind of Western star,
That we have come to be
Precisely what we are.
But every now and then,
It cannot be denied,
You breed a kind of men
Who are not dignified,
Benevolent or wise,
Or gifted with a mind
Beyond the common size,
Or notable for tact,
Agreeable to me,
Or anything, in fact,
That people ought to be.
J. K. STEPHEN
The Banks o’ Doon
Ye flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon,
How can ye blume sae fair!
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae fu’ o’ care!
Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonnie bird,
That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o’ the happy days
When my fause luve was true.
Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonnie bird,
That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
And wist na o’ my fate.
Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon,
To see the woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o’ its luve,
And sae did I o’ mine.
Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose
Frae off its thorny tree;
And my fause luver staw the rose,
But left the thorn wi’ me.
ROBERT BURNS
Sweet Afton
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by the murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far marked with the courses of clear, winding rills;
There daily I wander, as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary’s sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild ev’ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
ROBERT BURNS
In Rotten Row
In Rotten Row a cigarette
I sat and smoked, with no regret
For all the tumult that had been.
The distances were still and green,
And streaked with shadows cool and wet.
Two sweethearts on a bench were set,
Two birds among the boughs were met;
So love and song were heard and seen
In Rotten Row.
A horse or two there was to fret
The soundless sand; but work and debt,
Fair flowers and falling leaves between,
While clocks are chiming clear and keen,
A man may very well forget
In Rotten Row.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Facing West From California’s Shores
Facing west, from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western Sea — the circle almost circled;
For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia — from the north — from the God, the sage, and the hero,
From the south — from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;
Long having wander’d since — round the earth having wander’d,
Now I face home again — very pleas’d and joyous;
(But where is what I started for, so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
WALT WHITMAN
To Brooklyn Bridge
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty —
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
— Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;
And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride, —
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!
Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry, —
Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path — condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
HART CRANE
Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City
Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who detain’d me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together — all else has long been forgotten by me,
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.
WALT WHITMAN
I Travelled Among Unknown Men
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
’Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
I Knew By The Smoke That So Gracefully Curled
I KNEW by the smoke that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near,
And I said, ‘If there’s peace to be found in the world,
A heart that is humble might hope for it here!’
It was noon, and on flowers that languished around
In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound
But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree.
And ‘Here in this lone little wood,’ I exclaimed,
‘With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye,
Who would blush when I praised her, and weep if I blamed,
How blest could I live, and how calm could I die!
‘By the shade of yon sumach, whose red beity dips
In the gush of the fountain, how sweet to recline,
And to know that I sighed upon innocent lips,
Which had never been sighed on by any but mine!’
THOMAS MOORE