Famous Dive Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dive poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dive poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dive poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
Said he: "I'll dive deep in the Past,
And write a book of direful days
When summer skies were overcast
With smoke of humble hearths ablaze;
When War was rampant in the land,
And poor folk cowered in the night,
While ruin gaped on every hand -
of ravishing and wrath I'll write."
Ten years he toiled to write his book,
Yet he was happy all the while;
The...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
I
I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.
Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.
Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable time
And nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.
Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament;
His myrrh,...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
OH! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth...Read more of this...
by
Judith Viorst
My pants could maybe fall down when I dive off the diving board.My nose could maybe keep growing and never quit.Miss Brearly could ask me to spell words like stomach and special. (Stumick and speshul?)I could play tag all day and always be "it."Jay Spievack, who's fourteen feet tall, could want to fight me.My mom and my dad--like Ted's--could want...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors,
Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay,
Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures
The heavenly bay.
O friend, shall time take ever this away,
This blessing given of beauty that endures,
This glory shown us, not to pass but stay?
Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures
What memory, changed by love to sight,...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
GREAT are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
warriors,
and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Oh something just now must be happening there!
That suddenly and quiveringly here,
Amid the city's noises, I must think
Of mangoes leaning o'er the river's brink,
And dexterous Davie climbing high above,
The gold fruits ebon-speckled to remove,
And toss them quickly in the tangled mass
Of wis-wis twisted round the guinea grass;
And Cyril coming through the...Read more of this...
by
Jean Ingelow
A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)
To strive—and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star—and could not hail
With them its deep-set light.
Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Athwart the harbor lingers yet
The ashen gleam of breaking day,
And where the guardian cliffs are set
The noiseless shadows steal away;
But all the winnowed eastern sky
Is flushed with many a tender hue,
And spears of light are smiting through
The ranks where huddled sea-mists fly.
Across the ocean, wan and gray,
Gay fleets of golden ripples come,
For at the birth-hour of the day
The roistering,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1914-18
Farewell and adieu to you, Harwich Ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies ashore!
For we've received orders to work to the eastward
Where we hope in a short time to strafe 'em some more.
We'll duck and we'll dive like little tin turtles,
We'll duck and we'll dive underneath the North Seas,
Until we strike something...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I greet the challenge of the dawn
With weary, bleary eyes;
Into the sky so ashen wan
I wait the sun to rise;
Then in the morning's holy hush,
With heart of shame I hear
A robin from a lilac bush
Pipe pure and clear.
All night in dive and dicing den,
With wantons and with wine
I've squandered on wild, witless men
The...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die--
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
God who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, "Sit aloof;"
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,—
Ever...Read more of this...
by
John Wilmot
Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
The cigarette-smoke loops and slides above us,
Dipping and swirling as the waiter passes;
You strike a match and stare upon the flame.
The tiny fire leaps in your eyes a moment,
And dwindles away as silently as it came.
This melody, you say, has certain voices—
They rise like nereids from a river, singing,
Lift white faces, and dive to darkness again.
Wherever you go you...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
Mountains and seas,
You live in me
Whether I climb
To the top
Of the mind
Or dive deep
To the bottom
Of the heart
...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms,
hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.
No more sailing from harbor to harbor with this my weather-beaten boat.
The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.
And now I am eager to die into the deathless.
Into the audience...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
How the handsome Yenadizze
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding;
How the gentle Chibiabos,
He the sweetest of musicians,
Sang his songs of love and longing;
How Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
Told his tales of strange adventure,
That the feast might be more joyous,
That the time might pass more gayly,
And...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
and the sun weilds mercy
but like a jet torch carried to high,
and the jets whip across its sight
and rockets leap like toads,
and the boys get out the maps
and pin-cuishon the moon,
old green cheese,
no life there but too much on earth:
our unwashed India boys
crosssing their legs,playing pipes,
starving with sucked in bellies,
watching the snakes volute
like beautiful women in the hungry air;
the...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Kanzo Makame, the diver, sturdy and small Japanee,
Seeker of pearls and of pearl-shell down in the depths of the sea,
Trudged o'er the bed of the ocean, searching industriously.
Over the pearl-grounds the lugger drifted -- a little white speck:
Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", holding the life-line on deck,
Talked through the rope to the diver, knew when...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sphynx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled,
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.?
"Who'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?
? I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;?
The fate of the manchild,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown,
Dædalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.
Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant...Read more of this...
by
Lascelles Abercrombie
Follow my heart, my dancing feet,
Dance as blithe as my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.
I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths...Read more of this...
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