Famous At Sea Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous At Sea poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous at sea poems. These examples illustrate what a famous at sea poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Eliza Cook
HE crawls to the cliff and plays on a brink
Where every eye but his own would shrink;
No music he hears but the billow’s noise,
And shells and weeds are his only toys.
No lullaby can the mother find
To sing him to rest like the moaning wind;
And the louder it wails and the fiercer it sweeps,
The...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Ye sons of Mars, come list to me,
And I will relate to ye
A great and heroic naval fight,
Which will fill your hearts with delight.
The fight was between the French Frigate "Pique" and the British Frigate "Blanche,"
But the British crew were bold and staunch;
And the battle was fought in West Indian waters in the year of 1795,
And for to...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
A pathetic tale of the sea I will unfold,
Enough to make one's blood run cold;
Concerning four fishermen cast adrift in a dory.
As I've been told I'll relate the story.
T'was on the 8th April on the afternoon of that day
That the village of Louisburg was thrown into a wild state or dismay,
And the villagers flew to the beach in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Sea said "Come" to the Brook --
The Brook said "Let me grow" --
The Sea said "Then you will be a Sea --
I want a Brook -- Come now"!
The Sea said "Go" to the Sea --
The Sea said "I am he
You cherished" -- "Learned Waters --
Wisdom is stale -- to Me"...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
'Farewell and adieu' was the burden prevailing
Long since in the chant of a home-faring crew;
And the heart in us echoes, with laughing or wailing,
Farewell and adieu.
Each year that we live shall we sing it anew,
With a water untravelled before us for sailing
And a water behind us that wrecks may bestrew.
The stars of the past and the beacons are paling,
The...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The sages who have compassed sea and land,
Their secret to search out, and understand,—
My mind misgives me if they ever solve
The scheme on which this universe is planned....Read more of this...
by
Syl Cheney-Coker
After our bloody century, the sea will groan
under its weight, somewhere between breasts and anus.
Filled with toxins, her belly will not yield new islands
even though the orphans of East Timor wish it so.
The sea is only capable of so much history:
Noah's monologue, the Middle Passage's cargoes,
Darwin's examination of the turtle's ****,
the remains of the Titanic, and a diver's story
about how...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile.
The brilliant blue of the morning sea, of the cloudless sky,
the yellow shore; all lovely,
all bathed in light.
Let me stand here. And let me pretend I see all this
(I really did see it for a minute when I first stopped)
and not my usual day-dreams here too,
my memories, those images...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The drop wept for his severance from the sea,
But the sea smiled, for «I am all,» said he,
«The Truth is all, nothing exists beside,
That one point circling apes plurality.»...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
There is found a tiny sea shell,Half-imbedded in the sand,Sometimes flashing in the moonlight,Like a diamond on the strand.And from out the winding chambersThat are hid within the shell,Ever steals a curious music,That doth never sink nor swell.But, like the far-off voice of ocean,Murmurs forth its monotone,Holding thus within its bosomE’er an ocean of its own.Thus the sea shells ever...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory---like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, 'Ho! victory!'
And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale;
So runs the Arab tale.
The sky above us showed
An universal and unmoving cloud,
On which, the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar --
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world -- here on...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
If all the seas were one sea,
What a _great_ sea that would be!
And if all the trees were one tree,
What a _great_ tree that would be!
And if all the axes were one axe,
What a _great_ axe that would be!
And if all the men were one man,
What a _great_ man he would be!
And if the _great_ man took the _great_ axe,
And...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.
They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
(Capri, Piccola Marina)
Timeless sea breezes,
sea-wind of the night:
you come for no one;
if someone should wake,
he must be prepared
how to survive you.
Timeless sea breezes,
that for aeons have
blown ancient rocks,
you are purest space
coming from afar...
Oh, how a fruit-bearing
fig tree feels your coming
high up in the moonlight....Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Sad is the Evening: all the level sand
Lies left and lonely, while the restless sea,
Tired of the green caresses of the land,
Withdraws into its own infinity.
But still more sad this white and chilly Dawn
Filling the vacant...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
I smile o'er the wrinkled blue
Lo! the sea is fair,
Smooth as the flow of a maiden's hair;
And the welkin's light shines through
Into mid-sea caverns of beryl hue,
And the little waves laugh and the mermaids sing,
And the sea is a beautiful, sinuous thing!
I scowl in sullen guise
The sea grows dark and dun,
The swift clouds hide the sun
But not the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Upon a Lilac Sea
To toss incessantly
His Plush Alarm
Who fleeing from the Spring
The Spring avenging fling
To Dooms of Balm...Read more of this...
by
A S J Tessimond
1
(Windless Summer)
Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed
Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes.
2
(Winter)
Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks,
Noosing, slipping and noosing again for ever.
3
(Windy Summer)
Over-sea going, under returning, meet
And make a wheel, a shell, to hold the sun....Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
A man came slowly from the setting sun,
To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun,
And said, 'I am that swineherd whom you bid
Go watch the road between the wood and tide,
But now I have no need to watch it more.'
Then Emer cast the web upon the floor,
And raising arms all raddled with the dye,
Parted her lips with a loud sudden...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
Black riders came from the sea.
There was clang and clang of spear and shield,
And clash and clash of hoof and heel,
Wild shouts and the wave of hair
In the rush upon the wind:
Thus the ride of sin....Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
for a man whose eyes till now were a bed of rock
whose hands were drier than deserts
the sea's voice drove fear up through the valley
the tributaries meandering inside me longing for outlet
shrivelled even as their own courses became straight
my demand for ocean died now the ocean approached
the clouds put up with a lot of invective from me today
not a...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul.
Such lights she gives as guide my bark;
But I am swallowed in the swell
Of her heart's ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell.
In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea --
And that -- a further -- and the Three
But a presumption be --
Of Periods of Seas --
Unvisited of Shores --
Themselves the Verge of Seas to be --
Eternity -- is Those --...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
IN cabin’d ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves—the large imperious waves—In
such,
Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine,
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star
at night,...Read more of this...
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