Famous Albatross Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Albatross poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous albatross poems. These examples illustrate what a famous albatross poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...worn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This la...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...e,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like- almost anything-
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before-
Videlicet, a tent-
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings....Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...She left me at the silent time
When the moon had ceas'd to climb
The azure path of Heaven's steep,
And like an albatross asleep,
Balanc'd on her wings of light,
Hover'd in the purple night,
Ere she sought her ocean nest
In the chambers of the West.
She left me, and I stay'd alone
Thinking over every tone
Which, though silent to the ear,
The enchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;
And feeling ever--oh, to...Read more of this...
by
Hayden, Robert
...gain. Misfortune
follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning
tutelary gods). Which one of us
has killed an albatross? A plague among
our blacks--Ophthalmia: blindness--& we
have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.
Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes
& there is blindness in the fo'c'sle
& we must sail 3 weeks before we come
to port."
What port awaits us, Davy Jones' or home? I've ...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...to inconceivable fulfillment slowly:
And still I follow you, awkward as that dandy of ontology
and as awkward as his albatross and as
another dandy of ontology before him, another shepherd
and watchdog of being, the one who
Talked forever of forever as if forever of having been
and being an ancient mariner,
Hesitant forever as if forever were the albatross
Hung round his neck by the seven seas of the seven muses,
and with as little conclusion, since being never con...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...hin' but the souls o' the drowned,
Souls o' the drowned, an' the kicked as are never no more
An' that there haughty old albatross cruisin' around,
Belike he's Admiral Nelson or Admiral Noah.
"An' merry's the life they are living. They settle and dip,
They fishes, they never stands watches, they waggle their wings;
When a ship comes by, they fly to look at the ship
To see how the nowaday mariners manages things.
"When freezing aloft in a snorter I tell you I wish...Read more of this...
by
Ammons, A R
...t, spider ****, kangaroo and peccary ****, guanaco
****, dolphin ****, aphid ****, baboon **** (that leopards
induce), albatross ****, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) ****, tern ****, hedgehog ****, panda ****,
seahorse ****, and the **** of the wasteful gallinule....Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Taormina, 1923...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...Often, to amuse themselves, the crew of the ship
Would fell an albatross, the largest of sea birds,
Indolent companions of their trip
As they slide across the deep sea's bitters.
Scarcely had they dropped to the plank
Than these blue kings, maladroit and ashamed
Let their great white wings sink
Like an oar dragging under the water's plane.
The winged visitor, so awkward and weak!
So recently beautiful, now com...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...sea;
I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
"My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!"
The East Wind roared: -- "From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
Look -- look well to you...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...was
A Bear without a Head.
'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing!
It's waiting to be fed!'
He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
'You'd best be getting home,' he said:
'The nights are very damp!'
He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
'And all its mystery,' he said,
'Is clear as day to me!'
He thought he saw ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ath of Beethoven, her favourite cat,
Watching Mozart’s ginger fur, his plaintive tone of loss, whether
Some miscreant albatross was laid across our deck, or bound around
The ship, or tangled about whatever destiny we moved towards
Across that frozen sea of dark extremity; fatigued as if our barque
Had hardly stirred for all those years of strife, for all the times
We’d set the compass right, sorted through those heaped up charts
And with fingers weary and bleary-eyed r...Read more of this...
by
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Cam...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...seas,
Nor count it far across.
For which of us forget
The Indian cabinets,
The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross,
The pied and painted birds and beans,
The junks and bangles, beads and screens,
The gods and sacred bells,
And the load-humming, twisted shells!
The level of the parlour floor
Was honest, homely, Scottish shore;
But when we climbed upon a chair,
Behold the gorgeous East was there!
Be this a fable; and behold
Me in the parlour as of old, ...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Albatross poems.