The Oxford Book of Travel Verse by Kevin Crossley-Holland
 
The British have long prided themselves on being a nation of enthusiastic and  resourceful travellers. As pilgrims and missionaries, explorers, in the armed forces and as mercenaries. As diplomats and teachers and business people, grand tourists and package tourists, they have ventured forth to see the world. Among them have been great poets, and some whose voices are less well known, bought together for the first time in an anthology that charts the British aboard as reflected in their verse.