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Famous Cormorant Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Moore, Thomas
...fell out in the Fable.

It appear'd, though, to-night, that - as churchwardens, yearly,
Eat up a small baby - those cormorant sinners,
The Bankrupt-Commissioners bolt very nearly
A moderate-siz'd bankrupt, tout chaud, for their dinners![2]
Nota bene - a rumour to-day, in the City,
"Mr. R-b-ns-n just has resign'd" - what a pity!
The Bulls and the Bears all fell a sobbing,
When they heard of the fate of poor Cock Robin;
While thus, to the nursery tune, so pretty,
A murm...Read more of this...



by Grennan, Eamon
...is savage
valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes
came echoing through the rocky cove
where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay
and a heron rose off a boulder where he'd been invisible,
drifted a little, stood again -- a hieroglyph
or just longevity reflecting on itself
between the sky clouding over and the lightly ruffled water.

This was the morning after your dream of dying, of being held
and told it didn't matter. A butterf...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...lings climb. 
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life, 
The middle tree and highest there that grew, 
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life 
Thereby regained, but sat devising death 
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought 
Of that life-giving plant, but only used 
For prospect, what well used had been the pledge 
Of immortality. So little knows 
Any, but God alone, to value right 
The good before him, but perverts best things 
To worst abuse, or to their me...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...in not proof.

But best is this night surf
with slow scriptures of sand,
that sends, not quite a seraph,
but a late cormorant,

whose fading cry propels
through phosphorescent shoal
what, in my childhood gospels,
used to be called the Soul....Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...o heaven;
In the sky the sun, that listens,
And the moon eclipsed and dying;
Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk,
And the cormorant, bird of magic;
Headless men, that walk the heavens,
Bodies lying pierced with arrows,
Bloody hands of death uplifted,
Flags on graves, and great war-captains
Grasping both the earth and heaven!
Such as these the shapes they painted
On the birch-bark and the deer-skin;
Songs of war and songs of hunting,
Songs of medicine and of magic,
All were writ...Read more of this...



by Jeffers, Robinson
...Peace is the heir of dead desire,
Whether abundance killed the cormorant
In a happy hour, or sleep or death
Drowned him deep in dreamy waters,
Peace is the ashes of that fire,
The heir of that king, the inn of that journey.

This last and best and goal: we dead
Hold it so tight you are envious of us
And fear under sunk lids contempt.
Death-day greetings are the sweetest.
Let trumpets roar when a ma...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...hissing through the forest, 
Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, 
Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, 
Drove the cormorant and curlew 
To their nests of sedge and sea-tang 
In the realms of Shawondasee.
Once the fierce Kabibonokka
Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts 
From his home among the icebergs, 
And his hair, with snow besprinkled, 
Streamed behind him like a river, 
Like a black and wintry river, 
As he howled and hurried southward, 
Over frozen lakes and m...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...p an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,

the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.

And now he dives,
disappears below the surface,
and while I wait for him to pop up,
I picture him flying underwater with his strange wing...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...lake his form to spy,
     Darkening across each puny wave,
     To which the moon her silver gave.
     Fast as the cormorant could skim.
     The swimmer plied each active limb;
     Then landing in the moonlight dell,
     Loud shouted of his weal to tell.
     The Minstrel heard the far halloo,
     And joyful from the shore withdrew.




CANTO THIRD.

The Gathering.

     I.

     Time rolls his ceaseless course. The race of yore,
          Who danced...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...steel; 
Down her black hulk did reel 
Through the black water! 120 

"As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking some rocky haunt, 
With his prey laden, 
So toward the open main, 125 
Beating to sea again, 
Through the wild hurricane, 
Bore I the maiden. 

"Three weeks we westward bore, 
And when the storm was o'er, 130 
Cloud-like we saw the shore 
Stretching to leeward; 
There for my lady's bower 
Built I the lofty tower, 
Which,...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ike a wounded thing
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightningflash
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke--this haven
Was as a gem to copy heaven engraven.

On which that Lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star
(Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks
Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are)
In her light boat; and many quips a...Read more of this...

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