Famous Long Ocean Poems

Famous Long Ocean Poems. Long Ocean Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Ocean long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, 
And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, 
The bridle of his winged courser loosed, 
And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; 
High in the air, even to the topmost banks 
Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, 
And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, 
And now across the sea he shaped his course, 
Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald shores. 


There round Hibernia's fabled realm he coasted, 
Where the old saint had left the holy cave, 
Sought for the famous virtue that it boasted 
To purge the sinful visitor and save. 
Thence back returning over land and wave, 
Ruggiero came where the blue currents flow, 
The shores of Lesser Brittany to lave, 
And, looking down while sailing to and fro, 
He saw Angelica chained to the rock below. 


'Twas on the Island of Complaint -- well named, 
For there to that inhospitable shore, 
A savage people, cruel and untamed, 
Brought the rich prize of many a hateful war. 
To feed a monster that bestead them sore, 
They of fair ladies those that loveliest shone, 
Of tender maidens they the tenderest bore, 
And, drowned in tears and making piteous...
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 (From the early Anglo-Saxon text) 

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs
Hew my heart round and hunger begot
Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not
That he on dry land loveliest liveth,
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,
Weathered the winter, wretched outcast
Deprived of my kinsmen;
Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,
There I heard naught save the harsh sea
And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,
Did for my games the gannet's clamour,
Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter,
The mews' singing all my mead-drink.
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed
With spray on his pinion.
Not any protector
May make merry man faring needy.
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft
Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now
The heart's thought that I...
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 1.1 "What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song? 
1.2 Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
1.3 Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
1.4 Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
1.5 And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. 

1.6 It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
1.7 And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
1.8 It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
1.9 To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
1.10 To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
1.11 When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs. 

1.12 It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
1.13 To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
1.14 To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
1.15 To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;
1.16 To rejoice in the blight that covers...
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 Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment." 

And he answered saying: 

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, 

That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself. 

And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed. 

Like the ocean is your god-self; 

It remains for ever undefiled. 

And like the ether it lifts but the winged. 

Even like the sun is your god-self; 

It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent. 

But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being. 

Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, 

But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening. 

And of the man in you would I now speak. 

For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime. 

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of...
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 Beautiful spirit, come with me 
 Over the blue enchanted sea: 
 Morn and evening thou canst play 
 In my garden, where the breeze 
 Warbles through the fruity trees; 
 No shadow falls upon the day: 
 There thy mother's arms await 
 Her cherished infant at the gate. 
 Of Peris I the loveliest far— 
 My sisters, near the morning star, 
 In ever youthful bloom abide; 
 But pale their lustre by my side— 
 A silken turban wreathes my head, 
 Rubies on my arms are spread, 
 While sailing slowly through the sky, 
 By the uplooker's dazzled eye 
 Are seen my wings of purple hue, 
 Glittering with Elysian dew. 
 Whiter than a far-off sail 
 My form of beauty glows, 
 Fair as on a summer night 
 Dawns the sleep star's gentle light; 
 And fragrant as the early rose 
 That scents the green Arabian vale, 
 Soothing the pilgrim as he goes. 
 
 THE FAY. 
 
 Beautiful infant (said the Fay), 
 In the region of the sun 
 I dwell, where in a rich array 
 The clouds encircle the king of...
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 Inscribed to Colonel Banastre Tarleton]


TRANSCENDENT VALOUR! ­godlike Pow'r! 
Lord of the dauntless breast, and stedfast mien! 
Who, rob'd in majesty sublime, 
Sat in thy eagle-wafted car, 
And led the hardy sons of war, 
With head erect, and eye serene, 
Amidst the arrowy show'r; 
When unsubdued, from clime to clime, 
YOUNG AMMON taught exulting Fame 
O'er earth's vast space to sound the glories of thy name. 

ILLUSTRIOUS VALOUR ! from whose glance, 
Each recreant passion shrinks dismay'd; 
To whom benignant Heaven consign'd, 
All that can elevate the mind; 
'Tis THINE, in radiant worth array'd, 
To rear thy glitt'ring helmet high, 
And with intrepid front, defy 
Stern FATE's uplifted arm, and desolating lance, 
When, from the CHAOS of primeval Night, 
This wond'rous ORB first sprung to light; 
And pois'd amid the sphery clime 
By strong Attraction's pow'r sublime, 
Its whirling course began; 
With sacred spells encompass'd round, 
Each element observ'd its bound, 
Earth's solid base, huge promontories bore; 
Curb'd OCEAN roar'd, clasp'd by the rocky shore; 
And midst metallic fires, translucent rivers ran. 

All nature own'd th'OMNIPOTENT's command! 
Luxuriant blessings deck'd the vast domain; 
HE bade the budding branch expand; 
And from the teeming ground call'd forth the cherish'd grain; 
Salubrious...
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 The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog
Uncurling over the tainted city river,
A young girl rowing and her anxious father
Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever
Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer
Sulking in his tent. As though all stories began
With someone dying.

 When her mother died,
My mother refused to attend the funeral--
In fact, she sulked in her tent all through the year
Of the old lady's dying. I don't know why:
She said, because she loved her mother so much
She couldn't bear to see the way the doctors,
Or her father, or--someone--was letting her mother die.
"Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet."

She fogs things up, she scavenges the taint.
Possibly that's the reason I write these poems.

But they did speak: on the phone. Wept and argued,
So fiercely one or the other often cut off
A sentence by hanging up in rage--like lovers,
But all that year she never saw her face.

They lived on the same block, four doors apart.
"Absence my presence is; strangeness my grace;
With them that walk against me is my sun."

"Synagogue" is a word I never heard,
We called it shul, the Yiddish word for school.
Elms, terra-cotta, the ocean a few blocks east.
"Lay institution": she taught me we...
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 In Ionia whence sprang old poets' fame,
From whom that sea did first derive her name,
The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,
Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,
Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,
First unto Athens brought philosophy:
In this fair region on a goodly plain,
Stretching her bounds unto the bord'ring main,
The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,
Smiling to see the ocean billows play:
Latmus, where young Endymion used to keep
His fairest flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
To whom Silvanus often would resort,
At barley-brake to see the Satyrs sport;
And when rude Pan his tabret list to sound,
To see the fair Nymphs foot it in a round,
Under the trees which on this mountain grew,
As yet the like Arabia never knew;
For all the pleasures Nature could devise
Within this plot she did imparadise;
And great Diana of her special grace
With vestal rites had hallowed all the place.
Upon this mount there stood a stately grove,
Whose reaching arms to clip the welkin strove,
Of tufted cedars, and the branching pine,
Whose bushy tops themselves do so entwine,
As seem'd, when Nature first this work begun,
She then conspir'd against the piercing sun;
Under whose covert (thus divinely made)
Ph{oe}bus' green laurel flourish'd in the shade,
Fair Venus' myrtle, Mars his warlike fir,
Minerva's olive, and the weeping myrrh,
The patient palm, which...
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 Where wail the waters in their flaw
A spectre wanders to and fro,
And evermore that ghostly shore
Bemoans the heir of Yvytot.

Sometimes, when, like a fleecy pall,
The mists upon the waters fall,
Across the main float shadows twain
That do not heed the spectre's call.

The king his son of Yvytot
Stood once and saw the waters go
Boiling around with hissing sound
The sullen phantom rocks below.

And suddenly he saw a face
Lift from that black and seething place--
Lift up and gaze in mute amaze
And tenderly a little space,

A mighty cry of love made he--
No answering word to him gave she,
But looked, and then sunk back again
Into the dark and depthless sea.

And ever afterward that face,
That he beheld such little space,
Like wraith would rise within his eyes
And in his heart find biding place.

So oft from castle hall he crept
Where mid the rocks grim shadows slept,
And where the mist reached down and kissed
The waters as they wailed and wept.

The king it was of Yvytot
That vaunted, many years ago,
There was no coast his valiant host
Had not subdued with spear and bow.

For once to him the sea-king cried:
"In safety all thy ships shall ride
An thou but swear thy princely heir
Shall take my daughter to his bride.

"And lo, these winds that...
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RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines, 
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines; 
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare 
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air; 
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud, 
Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud; 

Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines, 
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens. 

Underneath these regal ridges - underneath the gnarly trees, 
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze! 
Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look 
Out across the hazy gloaming - out beyond the brawling brook! 
Over pathways leading skyward - over crag and swelling cone, 

Past long hillocks looking like to waves of ocean turned to stone; 
Yearning for a bliss unworldly, yearning for a brighter change, 
Yearning for the mystic Aidenn, built beyond this mountain range. 


Happy years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone, 
And my youthful hopes and friendships withered with them one by one; 
Days and moments bearing onward many a bright and beauteous dream,...
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 You ladies of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signior Dildo?

This signior was one of the Duchess's train
And helped to conduct her over the main;
But now she cries out, 'To the Duke I will go,
I have no more need for Signior Dildo.'

At the Sign of the Cross in St James's Street,
When next you go thither to make yourselves sweet
By buying of powder, gloves, essence, or so,
You may chance to get a sight of Signior Dildo.

You would take him at first for no person of note,
Because he appears in a plain leather coat,
But when you his virtuous abilities know,
You'll fall down and worship Signior Dildo.

My Lady Southesk, heaven prosper her for't,
First clothed him in satin, then brought him to court;
But his head in the circle he scarcely durst show,
So modest a youth was Signior Dildo.

The good Lady Suffolk, thinking no harm,
Had got this poor stranger hid under her arm.
Lady Betty by chance came the secret to know
And from her own mother stole Signior Dildo.

The Countess of Falmouth, of whom people tell
Her footmen wear shirts of a guinea an ell,
Might save that expense, if she did but...
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 Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and 
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights; 
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and 
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body; 
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with perfume, 
And read what the hand of Death has written on my forehead. 


Let me rest in the arms of Slumber, for my open eyes are tired; 
Let the silver-stringed lyre quiver and soothe my spirit; 
Weave from the harp and lute a veil around my withering heart. 


Sing of the past as you behold the dawn of hope in my eyes, for 
It's magic meaning is a soft bed upon which my heart rests. 


Dry your tears, my friends, and raise your heads as the flowers 
Raise their crowns to greet the dawn. 
Look at the bride of Death standing like a column of light 
Between my bed and the infinite; 
Hold your breath and listen with me to the beckoning rustle of 
Her white wings. 


Come close and bid me farewell; touch my eyes with smiling lips. 
Let...
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 The glory of God in creation and providence.

My soul, thy great Creator praise:
When clothed in his celestial rays,
He in full majesty appears,
And, like a robe, his glory wears.

The heav'ns are for his curtains spread,
The unfathomed deep he makes his bed.
Clouds are his chariot when he flies
On winged storms across the skies.

Angels, whom his own breath inspires,
His ministers, are flaming fires;
And swift as thought their armies move
To bear his vengeance or his love.

The world's foundations by his hand
Are poised, and shall for ever stand;
He binds the ocean in his chain,
Lest it should drown the earth again.

When earth was covered with the flood,
Which high above the mountains stood,
He thundered, and the ocean fled,
Confined to its appointed bed.

The swelling billows know their bound,
And in their channels walk their round;
Yet thence conveyed by secret veins,
They spring on hills and drench the plains.

He bids the crystal fountains flow,
And cheer the valleys as they go;
Tame heifers there their thirst allay,
And for the stream wild asses bray.

From pleasant trees which shade the brink,
The lark and linnet light to drink
Their songs the lark and linnet raise,
And chide our silence in his praise.

PAUSE I.

God from his cloudy cistern pours
On the parched earth enriching showers;
The grove, the garden, and...
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 1
NOW list to my morning’s romanza—I tell the signs of the Answerer; 
To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me. 

A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother; 
How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother? 
Tell him to send me the signs.

And I stand before the young man face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand,
 and his
 left
 hand in my right hand, 
And I answer for his brother, and for men, and I answer for him that answers for all, and
 send
 these
 signs. 

2
Him all wait for—him all yield up to—his word is decisive and final, 
Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light, 
Him they immerse, and he immerses them.

Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals, 
The profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean, (so tell I my morning’s
 romanza;)

All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy, 
The best farms—others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps, 
The noblest and costliest cities—others grading and building, and he domiciles there;
Nothing for any...
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 1
ELEMENTAL drifts! 
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me! 

As I ebb’d with an ebb of the ocean of life, 
As I wended the shores I know, 
As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, 
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, 
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, 
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems, 
Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe. 

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows, 
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, 
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide: 
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses, 
These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island, 
As I wended the shores I know, 
As I walk’d with that eternal Self of me, seeking types....
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