Famous Ballast Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ballast poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ballast poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ballast poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Donne, John
...I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught,
Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Then as an Angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure a...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...last o' bottom we shall see this year!
Well, ah fare you well, for we've got to take her out again --
Take her out in ballast, riding light and cargo-free.
And it's time to clear and quit
When the hawser grips the bitt,
So we'll pay you with the foresheet and a promise from the sea!
Heh! Tally on. Aft and walk away with her!
Handsome to the cathead, now; O tally on the fall!
Stop, seize and fish, and easy on the davit-guy.
Up, well up the fluke of her, and...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...nt his boat to sound,
Which, coming near the pirate, unfortunately ran aground;
But Maynard lightened his vessel of the ballast and water,
Whilst from the pirates' ship small shot loudly did clatter.
But the pirates' small shot or slugs didn't Maynard appal,
He told his men to take their cutlasses and be ready upon his call;
And to conceal themselves every man below,
While he would remain at the helm and face the foe.
Then Black Beard cried, "They're all knocked o...Read more of this...
by
Wilner, Eleanor
...like a pale moon
when the wind filled it, stranded,
searching in the aimless way
of unmoored things
for whatever human ballast gave
direction to their endless drift....Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...h lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.
There are dark moments when our ballast gives out
from so much banging around. Moments, or centuries,
when the flesh revels in its nakedness and reels
to its own destruction, sucking the life from itself.
I groped around me, trying on your embrace,
but love was not where your embrace was.
I felt your hands stroking that physical ache
but a great nothing went before your hands....Read more of this...
by
Guillen, Rafael
...h lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.
There are dark moments when our ballast gives out
from so much banging around. Moments, or centuries,
when the flesh revels in its nakedness and reels
to its own destruction, sucking the life from itself.
I groped around me, trying on your embrace,
but love was not where your embrace was.
I felt your hands stroking that physical ache
but a great nothing went before your hands....Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...A ship that bears much sail, and little ballast, is easily
overset; and that man, whose head hath great abilities, and his
heart little or no grace, is in danger of foundering.
The finest bread has the least bran; the purest honey, the
least wax; and the sincerest Christian, the least self-love.
Sweet words are like honey; a little may refresh, but too much
gluts the stomach.
Di...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...he nameless never came.
And the Bleeders soon forgot him; but the captain of the push
Still is `laying' round, in ballast, for the nameless `from the bush.'...Read more of this...
by
Davies, William Henry
...sea,
And dusky girls heartbroken for white men;
More rich than Spain, when the Phoenicians shipped
Silver for common ballast, and they saw
Horses at silver mangers eating grain;
This man has seen the wind blow up a mermaid's hair
Which, like a golden serpent, reared and stretched
To feel the air away beyond her head.
He begged my pennies, which I gave with joy --
He will most certainly return some time
A self-made king of some new land, and rich.
Alas that ...Read more of this...
by
Russell, George William
...like eels--
the tablet of the world--
the bones and their joints
that build and break for any trick,
the genitals,
the ballast of the eternal,
and the heart, of course,
that swallows the tides
and spits them out cleansed.
He does not envy the soul so much.
He is all soul
but He would like to house it in a body
and come down
and give it a bath
now and then....Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...'s prayed for my soul,
But he couldn't lie if you paid him, and he'd starve before he stole.
He'll take the Mary in ballast -- you'll find her a lively ship;
And you'll take Sir Anthony Gloster, that goes on 'is wedding-trip,
Lashed in our old deck-cabin with all three port-holes wide,
The kick o' the screw beneath him and the round blue seas outside!
Sir Anthony Gloster's carriage -- our 'ouse-flag flyin' free --
Ten thousand men on the pay-roll and forty freighters at s...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...re in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down below;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the we...Read more of this...
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