Famous Castaway Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Doors Doors Doors

by Anne Sexton
 1. Old Man

Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.

The room will do. All that's left of the old life
is jampacked on shelves from floor to ceiling
like a supermarket: your books, your dead wife
generously fat...Read more of this...

Lovesong

by Ted Hughes
 He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his...Read more of this...

Old Scout

by Robert William Service
 Is it because I'm bent and grey,
 Though wearing rather well,
That I can slickly get away
 With all the yarns I tell?
Is it because my bleary eye
 No longer beams with youth
That I can plant a whopping lie,
 And flout the truth?

I wonder why folks hark to me
 Where once they would have laughed?
They treat my yarns respectfully,
 No...Read more of this...

Welcome Cross

by William Cowper
 'Tis my happiness below
Not to live without the cross,
But the Saviour's power to know,
Sanctifying every loss;
Trials must and will befall;
But with humble faith to see
Love inscribed upon them all,
This is happiness to me.

God in Israel sows the seeds
Of affliction, pain, and toil;
These spring up and choke the weeds
Which would else o'erspread the soil:
Trials make the promise sweet,
Trials give new...Read more of this...

A Prayer

by Anne Bronte
 My God (oh, let me call Thee mine,
Weak, wretched sinner though I be),
My trembling soul would fain be Thine;
My feeble faith still clings to Thee.

Not only for the Past I grieve,
The Future fills me with dismay;
Unless Thou hasten to relieve,
Thy suppliant is a castaway.

I cannot say my faith is strong,
I dare not hope my love is great;
But strength and...Read more of this...

The Castaway

by William Cowper
 Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not...Read more of this...

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