songs for the open road poems of travel and adventure

Songs for the open road poems of travel and adventure: Streets frequently highlight in verse, as images for our lives (the ‘venture’ we are going on, regardless of whether en route to something, or heading away from it), or as markers of humankind’s communication with nature. The following are ten of the best sonnets about streets in all of English writing, every one of which accomplishes something somewhat unique with the street or track it presents to us.

The title of this sonnet by one of Romantic writing’s disregarded greats, John Clare (1793-1864), says everything: Clare portrays the things he sees on a country path during springtime, his perceptions tumbling out into the sonnet in joyous forsake and obvious suddenness.

In this sonnet, the ruler of frightful English refrain expounds on leaving his cherished, with the street lying in front of him that ‘drives me from my affection’. Furthermore in spite of the fact that he believes that a similar street will ultimately lead him back to his adoration, first he should go far, far away.

So starts this exemplary Kipling sonnet about a neglected street in the forest, which transforms into a nearly spooky street in the last refrain, as Kipling recommends that the street ‘recollects’ the men and ponies who used to go through it.