Famous Docks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs

by Carl Sandburg
 RUM tiddy um,
 tiddy um,
 tiddy um tum tum.
My knees are loose-like, my feet want to sling their selves.
I feel like tickling you under the chin—honey—and a-asking: Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road?
When the hens are a-laying eggs, and the roosters pluck-pluck-put-akut and you—honey—put new potatoes and gravy on the table, and there ain’t too much rain or...Read more of this...

Block City

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, 
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbor as well where my vessels...Read more of this...

The Ruined Maid

by Thomas Hardy
"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? 
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?"--
"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

--"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"--
"Yes: that's how we dress when...Read more of this...

Its Grand

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 It's grand to be a squatter 
And sit upon a post, 
And watch your little ewes and lambs 
A-giving up the ghost. 

It's grand to be a "cockie" 
With wife and kids to keep, 
And find an all-wise Providence 
Has mustered all your sheep. 

It's grand to be a Western man, 
With shovel in your hand, 
To dig your...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Bolivar

by Rudyard Kipling
 Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again,
Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away --
We that took the Bolivar out across the Bay!

We put out from Sunderland loaded down with rails;
 We put back to Sunderland 'cause our cargo shifted;
We put out from Sunderland -- met the...Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

G was Papas new Gun

by Edward Lear
G  was Papa's new Gun;He put it in a box; And then he went and bought a bun,And walked about the Docks. ...Read more of this...

Transcription Of Organ Music

by Allen Ginsberg
 The flower in the glass peanut bottle formerly in the
 kitchen crooked to take a place in the light, 
the closet door opened, because I used it before, it
 kindly stayed open waiting for me, its owner.

I began to feel my misery in pallet on floor, listening
 to music, my misery, that's why I want to sing.
The room closed...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Steamer Stella

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the month of March and in the year of 1899,
Which will be remembered for a very long time;
The wreck of the steamer "Stella" that was wrecked on the Casquet Rocks,
By losing her bearings in a fog, and received some terrible shocks. 

The "Stella" was bound for the Channel Islands on a holiday trip,
And a number of passengers...Read more of this...

Inheritance—His

by Audre Lorde
 I. 
My face resembles your face
less and less each day. When I was young
no one mistook whose child I was.
Features build coloring
alone among my creamy fine-boned sisters
marked me Byron's daughter.

No sun set when you died, but a door
opened onto my mother. After you left
she grieved her crumpled world aloft
an iron fist sweated with business symbols
a printed blotter dwell in...Read more of this...

Call It Music

by Philip Levine
 Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in...Read more of this...

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

by Robert Browning
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who...Read more of this...

The Ballad of Cockatoo Dock

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Of all the docks upon the blue 
There was no dockyard, old or new, 
To touch the dock at Cockatoo. 

Of all the ministerial clan 
There was no nicer, worthier man 
Than Admiral O'Sullivan. 

Of course, we mean E. W. 
O'Sullivan, the hero who 
Controlled the dock at Cockatoo. 

To workmen he explained his views -- 
"You need not...Read more of this...

Hudsons Last Voyage

by Henry Van Dyke
 June 22, 1611 

THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY 

One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship 
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard 
These waters, greater grown than any since
We left the shores of England. We were first, 
My men, to battle in between the bergs
And floes to these wide...Read more of this...

Docks

by Carl Sandburg
 STROLLING along
By the teeming docks,
I watch the ships put out.
Black ships that heave and lunge
And move like mastodons
Arising from lethargic sleep.

The fathomed harbor
Calls them not nor dares
Them to a strain of action,
But outward, on and outward,
Sounding low-reverberating calls,
Shaggy in the half-lit distance,
They pass the pointed headland,
View the wide, far-lifting wilderness
And leap with cumulative speed
To test the challenge of the...Read more of this...

The Ancient Town of Leith

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ancient town of Leith, most wonderful to be seen,
With your many handsome buildings, and lovely links so green,
And the first buildings I may mention are the Courthouse and Town Hall,
Also Trinity House, and the Sailors' Home of Call. 

Then as for Leith Fort, it was erected in 1779, which is really grand,
And which is now the artillery headquarters in...Read more of this...

For Australia

by Henry Lawson
 Now, with the wars of the world begun, they'll listen to you and me, 
Now while the frightened nations run to the arms of democracy, 
Now, when our blathering fools are scared, and the years have proved us right – 
All unprovided and unprepared, the Outpost of the White! 

"Get the people – no matter how," that is the...Read more of this...

Sea Gull (Leith Docks, 1995)

by Omer Tarin
Once before I've heard this
anguished cry

A long-drawn note of many-lettered woe,
The great open beak straining 
against the roar of raging surf;

Head, thrown back, taut
against the distant sails

Anger flickering in eyes flecked with amber,
rolling in lonely knowledge,
this bond servant of the sea,
tied by its giant wingspan 
to the torturous flight of sainthood

Martyred
in its terrible existence
murdered
by the yellow fog of banality

Victim 
to...Read more of this...

Embarcation

by Thomas Hardy
 Southampton Docks: October 1899 


Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands, 
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in, 
And Henry's army lept afloat to win 
Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands,

Vaster battalions press for further strands, 
To argue in the selfsame bloody mode 
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, 
Still fails to mend.--Now deckward tramp the...Read more of this...

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