Less Traveled (Redwood)

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. -Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, 1916

When I Crossed (Yosemite)

What voice did on my spirit fall,   Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost? -Arthur Hugh Clough, Peschiera

Stand in the Desert (Utah)

I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read." -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, 1817

I Saw the City (SF Bay)

I lean'd, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo (excerpt), 1824

Sea of Gold (SF Bay)

To-night the very horses springing by Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream The streets that narrow to the westward gleam Like rows of golden palaces; and high From all the crowded chimneys tower and die A thousand aureoles. Down in the west The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest, One burning sea of gold. Soon, soon shall fly The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel A mightier master; soon from height to height, With silence and the sharp unpitying stars, Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel, Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars, Glittering and still shall come the awful night. -Archibald Lampman, Winter Evening, 1899

From Cape to Cape (SF Bay)

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,       Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,       The mountains its columns be. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud, 1820

Beneath the Night (SF Bay)

So the day grew old about them and the joy of their desire, And eve and the sunset came, and faint grew the sunset fire, And the shadowless death of the day was sweet in the golden tide; But the stars shone forth on the world, and the twilight changed and died; And sure if the first of man-folk had been born to that starry night, And had heard no tale of the sunrise, he had never longed for the light: But Earth longed amidst her slumber, as 'neath the night she lay, And fresh and all abundant abode the deeds of Day. -William Morris, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, 1876

Lights Around the Shore (SF Bay)

I have been here before,       But when or how I cannot tell; I know the grass beyond the door,       The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. -Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sudden Light, 1881