Famous Drake Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Drake poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous drake poems. These examples illustrate what a famous drake poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...rick brood;
He’s gane for ever!
Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals;
Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
Ye duck and drake, wi’ airy wheels
Circling the lake;
Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Rair for his sake.
Mourn, clam’ring craiks at close o’ day,
’Mang fields o’ flow’ring clover gay;
And when ye wing your annual way
Frae our claud shore,
Tell thae far warlds wha lies in clay,
Wham we deplore.
Ye houlets, frae your ivy bow’r
In some auld tree, or eldritch ...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...’ld hair stood like a stake,
When wi’ an eldritch, stoor “quaick, quaick,”
Amang the springs,
Awa ye squatter’d like a drake,
On whistlin’ wings.
Let warlocks grim, an’ wither’d hags,
Tell how wi’ you, on ragweed nags,
They skim the muirs an’ dizzy crags,
Wi’ wicked speed;
And in kirk-yards renew their leagues,
Owre howkit dead.
Thence countra wives, wi’ toil and pain,
May plunge an’ plunge the kirn in vain;
For oh! the yellow treasure’s ta’en
By witchin’ skill;
An’ ...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...her a fire to make, make, make.To roast the little duck he had shot in the brook, And he'd go and fetch the drake, drake, drake.The drake was a-swimming with his curly tail; The little man made it his mark, mark, mark.He let off his gun, but he fired too soon, And the drake flew away with a quack, quack, quack....Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...no whit the better for them. (ll. 2669-87)
Then the folk-scather rushed forward
for the third time, the wicked fire-drake,
mindful of the feud, towards the brave man,
when it found an opening, heated
and battle-grim, catching him with bitter fangs
right through the neck. Beowulf became bloody,
with fatal dripping—battle-sweat welled out in waves. (ll. 2688-93)
XXXVII.
Then the noble by his side as I have heard
revealed his courage at his nation’s king’s
...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand miles away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time O' Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi' sailor lads a-dancing' heel-an'-toe,
An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin',
He sees et arl so pl...Read more of this...
by
Newbolt, Sir Henry
... A duck and a drake, And a halfpenny cake,With a penny to pay the old baker. A hop and a scotch Is another notch,Slitherum, slatherum, take her....Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...Drake is going west, lads
So Tom is going East
But tiny Fred
Just lies in bed,
The lazy little beast....Read more of this...
by
Milligan, Spike
...Columbus got over,
That is a marvel to me, I protest,
Cabot, and Raleigh too, that well-read rover,
Frobisher, Dampier, Drake and the rest.
Bad enough all the same,
For them that after came,
But, in great Heaven's name,
How he should ever think
That on the other brink
Of this huge waste terra firma should be,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.
How a man ever should hope to get thither,
E'e'n if he knew of there being another side;
But to suppose he should come any whither,...Read more of this...
by
Clough, Arthur Hugh
...unite the lands.
And all the English captains that have dared
In little ships to plough uncharted waves, --
Davis and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher,
Raleigh and Gilbert, -- all the other names, --
Are written in the chivalry of God
As men who served His purpose. I would claim
A place among that knighthood of the sea;
And I have earned it, though my quest should fail!
For, mark me well, the honour of our life
Derives from this: to have a certain aim
Before us always, whic...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...Queen:
2.43 Her Sea-men through all straits the world did round,
2.44 Terra incognitæ might know her sound.
2.45 Her Drake came laded home with Spanish gold,
2.46 Her Essex took Cadiz, their Herculean hold.
2.47 But time would fail me, so my wit would too,
2.48 To tell of half she did, or she could do.
2.49 Semiramis to her is but obscure;
2.50 More infamy than fame she did procure.
2.51 She plac'd her glory but on Babel's walls,
2.52 World's wonder for a time, but ...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...ue of the waters ply
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;
And, look you, floating just thereby,
The blue-gleamed drake stems proud
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.
In the lustrous gleam of the water, there
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,
Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share
The darkness that interweaves
The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.
Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts
Like a storm...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on my distant and day-long ramble;
They rise together—they slowly circle around.
I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else;
And the jay in...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...led Herring, pickled Heeren chang'd.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at Duck and Drake.
Therefore Necessity, that first made Kings,
Something like Government among them brings.
For as with Pygmees who best kills the Crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures Grain,
Among the blind the one-ey'd blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that draines.
Not who first see the rising Sun commands,
But who could first discern the rising Land...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...O'Driscoll drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.
And he saw how the reeds grew dark
At the coming of night-tide,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.
He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.
And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level ...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God w...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...V.
Upon a rock with lichens wild,
Beside him Ellen sat and smiled.—
Smiled she to see the stately drake
Lead forth his fleet upon the lake,
While her vexed spaniel from the beach
Bayed at the prize beyond his reach?
Yet tell me, then, the maid who knows,
Why deepened on her cheek the rose?—
Forgive, forgive, Fidelity!
Perchance the maiden smiled to see
Yon parting lingerer wave adieu,
And stop and tur...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...
When that the greate shower is gone away.
Then shalt thou swim as merry, I undertake,
As doth the white duck after her drake:
Then will I clepe,* 'How, Alison? How, John? *call
Be merry: for the flood will pass anon.'
And thou wilt say, 'Hail, Master Nicholay,
Good-morrow, I see thee well, for it is day.'
And then shall we be lordes all our life
Of all the world, as Noe and his wife.
But of one thing I warne thee full right,
Be well advised, on that ilke* night, *same
When w...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...f the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free....Read more of this...
by
Berry, Wendell
...
Follow after-follow after -- for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!
When Drake went down to the Horn
And England was crowned thereby,
'Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed
Our Lodge -- our Lodge was born
(And England was crowned thereby!)
Which never shall close again
By day nor yet by night,
While man shall take his ife to stake
At risk of shoal or main
(By day nor yet by night)
But standeth even so
As now we wit...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...d hear one midnight that long sad sigh.
I saw the gardens, after our tea
(Crumpets and marmalade, toast and cake)
And Drake's Walk, leading down to the sea;
Lady Jean was startled I'd heard of Drake,
For the English always find it a mystery
That Americans study English history.
I saw the picture of every son—
Percy, the eldest, and John; and Bill
In Chinese Customs, and the youngest one
Peter, the sailor, at Osborne still;
And the daughter, Enid, married, alas,
To a civil ...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
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