Famous Cruising Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The City Planners

by Margaret Atwood
 Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being...Read more of this...

Flowers -- Well -- if anybody

by Emily Dickinson
 Flowers -- Well -- if anybody
Can the ecstasy define --
Half a transport -- half a trouble --
With which flowers humble men:
Anybody find the fountain
From which floods so contra flow --
I will give him all the Daisies
Which upon the hillside blow.

Too much pathos in their faces
For a simple breast like mine --
Butterflies from St. Domingo
Cruising round the purple line --
Have...Read more of this...

A Passing Hail

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Let us rest ourselves a bit! 
Worry?-- wave your hand to it -- 
Kiss your finger-tips and smile 
It farewell a little while.

Weary of the weary way 
We have come from Yesterday, 
Let us fret not, instead, 
Of the wary way ahead.

Let us pause and catch our breath 
On the hither side of death, 
While we see the tender...Read more of this...

The Collision in the English Channel

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas on a Sunday morning, and in the year of 1888,
The steamer "Saxmundham," laden with coal and coke for freight,
Was run into amidships by the Norwegian barque "Nor,"
And sunk in the English Channel, while the storm fiend did roar. 

She left Newcastle on Friday, in November, about two o'clock,
And proceeded well on her way until she received a shock;
And...Read more of this...

The Harbour

by Eavan Boland
 This harbour was made by art and force.
And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire.
And holds the sea behind its barrier
less than five miles from my house.

Lord be with us say the makers of a nation.
Lord look down say the builders of a harbour.
They came and cut a shape out of ocean
and left stone to close around their labour.

Officers and...Read more of this...

Style

by Howard Nemerov
 Flaubert wanted to write a novel
About nothing. It was to have no subject
And be sustained upon the style alone,
Like the Holy Ghost cruising above
The abyss, or like the little animals
In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch
That breaks, but do not fall
Till they look down. He never wrote that novel,
And neither did he write another one
That would have been...Read more of this...

Heaven is what I cannot reach!

by Emily Dickinson
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
   The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
   That "heaven" is, to me.

The color on the cruising cloud,
   The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
   There Paradise is found!...Read more of this...

The Christmas Tree

by Robert William Service
 In the dark and damp of the alley cold,
Lay the Christmas tree that hadn't been sold;
By a shopman dourly thrown outside;
With the ruck and rubble of Christmas-tide;
Trodden deep in the muck and mire,
Unworthy even to feed a fire...
So I stopped and salvaged that tarnished tree,
And thus is the story it told to me:

"My Mother was Queen of the forest...Read more of this...

The Dependencies

by Howard Nemerov
 This morning, between two branches of a tree
Beside the door, epeira once again
Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap.
I test his early-warning system and
It works, he scrambles forth in sable with
The yellow hieroglyph that no one knows
The meaning of. And I remember now
How yesterday at dusk the nighthawks came
Back as they do about this time each year,
Grey squadrons...Read more of this...

Jonah and the Grampus

by Marriott Edgar
 I'll tell you the story of Jonah,
A really remarkable tale;
A peaceful and humdrum existence he had
Until one day he went for a sail. 

The weather were grand when they started,
But later at turn of the tide
The wind started blowing, the water got rough,
And Jonah felt funny inside.

When the ship started pitching and tossing
He tried hard his feelings to smother,
At...Read more of this...

Heaven -- is what I cannot reach!

by Emily Dickinson
 "Heaven" -- is what I cannot reach!
The Apple on the Tree --
Provided it do hopeless -- hang --
That -- "Heaven" is -- to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud --
The interdicted Land --
Behind the Hill -- the House behind --
There -- Paradise -- is found!

Her teasing Purples -- Afternoons --
The credulous -- decoy --
Enamored -- of the Conjuror --
That...Read more of this...

An All-Night Sea Fight

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...

Now Finale to the Shore

by Walt Whitman
 NOW finale to the shore! 
Now, land and life, finale, and farewell! 
Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;) 
Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas, 
Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,
Duly again to port, and hawser’s tie, returning: 
—But now obey, thy cherish’d, secret wish, 
Embrace thy friends—leave all in order; 
To port, and...Read more of this...

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