Famous Beached Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Beached poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous beached poems. These examples illustrate what a famous beached poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Charmides

...ed to speak of Charmides
Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought,
And when they reached the strait Symplegades
They beached their galley on the shore, and sought
The toll-gate of the city hastily,
And in the market showed their brown and pictured pottery.


II.


But some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare
The boy's drowned body back to Grecian land,
And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair
And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching hand;
Some brought sweet spi...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Codicil

...ge your life.

I cannot right old wrongs.
Waves tire of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues

Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.

One I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there is no room at the trough.

I watch the best minds rot like dogs
for scraps of flavour.
I am nearing middle
age, burnt skin
peels from my hand like paper, onion-thin,
like Peer Gynt's riddle.

At heart there is...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

In the Smoking Car

...stream concurs in his repose. 

Could he but think, he might recall to mind 
The righteous mutiny or sudden gale 
That beached him here; the dear ones left behind . . . 
So near the ending, he forgets the tale. 

Were he to lift his eyelids now, he might 
Behold his maiden porters, brown and bare. 
But even here he has no appetite. 
It is enough to know that they are there. 

Enough that now a honeyed music swells, 
The gentle, mossed declivities begin, 
And the whole air is...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

Siren Song

...learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me 
out of this bird suit?

I don'y enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two faethery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing 
this trio, fatal and valuable....Read more of this...
by Williams, Hugo

The Bour-Tree Den

...blooms!

I ran, a little hempie lass,
In the sand and the bent grass,
Or took and kilted my small coats
To play in the beached fisher-boats.

I waded deep and I ran fast,
I was as lean as a lugger's mast,
I was as brown as a fisher's creel,
And I liked my life unco weel.

They blew a trumpet at the cross,
Some forty men, both foot and horse.
A'body cam to hear and see,
And wha, among the rest, but me.
My lips were saut wi' the saut air,
My face was brown, my feet were bare
T...Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Robert Louis


The Changeling ( From The Tent on the Beach )

..."

His horse he saddled and bridled,
And into the night rode he,
Now through the great black woodland,
Now by the white-beached sea.

He rode through the silent clearings,
He came to the ferry wide,
And thrice he called to the boatman
Asleep on the other side.

He set his horse to the river,
He swam to Newbury town,
And he called up Justice Sewall
In his nightcap and his gown.

And the grave and worshipful justice
(Upon whose soul be peace!)
Set his name to the jailer's warra...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The English Flag

...e English home.
Look -- look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!

"The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
I raped your richest roadstead -- I plundered Singapore!
I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.

"Never the lotus closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
But a soul goes out on the East Wind ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Exorcists

...d.

I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to us and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us, squalled out, we breathed in rain
and stroked past the boat.
We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped
in green and that suddenly inadequate stain

of lightning belling around
our skin. Bo...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

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