Famous Drown Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Goblet

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ONCE I held a well-carved brimming goblet,--
In my two hands tightly clasp'd I held it,
Eagerly the sweet wine sipp'd I from it,
Seeking there to drown all care and sorrow.

Amor enter'd in, and found me sitting,
And he gently smiled in modest fashion,
Smiled as though the foolish one he pitied.

"Friend, I know a far more beauteous vessel,
One wherein to sink thy...Read more of this...

The Story of Mongrel Grey

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 This is the story the stockman told 
On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright; 
The moon rose up like a globe of gold 
And flooded the plain with her mellow light. 
We watched the cattle till dawn of day 
And he told me the story of Mongrel Grey. 
He was a knock-about station hack, 
Spurred and walloped, and...Read more of this...

I Live I Die I Burn I Drown

by Delmira Agustini
 I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer...Read more of this...

Australia

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey 
In the field uniform of modern wars, 
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws 
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away. 

They call her a young country, but they lie: 
She is the last of lands, the emptiest, 
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast 
Still tender...Read more of this...

I Live I Die I Burn I Drown

by Louise Labe
 I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer...Read more of this...

'Tis wrong with gloomy thoughts your mirth to drown, —

by Omar Khayyam
'Tis wrong with gloomy thoughts your mirth to drown,—
To let grief's millstone weigh your spirits down;
Since none can tell what is to be, 'tis best
With wine and love your heart's desires to crown....Read more of this...

The Answer

by Robinson Jeffers
 Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams. 
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, 
 and their tyrants come, many times before. 
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose 
 the least ugly faction; these evils are essential. 
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted 
...Read more of this...

Psalm 104

by Isaac Watts
 The glory of God in creation and providence.

My soul, thy great Creator praise:
When clothed in his celestial rays,
He in full majesty appears,
And, like a robe, his glory wears.

The heav'ns are for his curtains spread,
The unfathomed deep he makes his bed.
Clouds are his chariot when he flies
On winged storms across the skies.

Angels, whom his own breath inspires,
His ministers, are flaming...Read more of this...

If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love

by Dylan Thomas
 If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the...Read more of this...

Come let us drink & deeply drown

by Hafez
Come let us drink & deeply drown
In Heav’n’s pure wine our sorrowing!
Fling ye earth’s faded garlands down,
Scatter away life’s flowering!

Though sorrow’s myriad armies strive
To subjugate & slay us, we,
O proud cup-bearer, will contrive
To overcome their tyranny.

O earth’s sad lover, drink & throw
Unto high heaven thy misery:
So shall perchance bright beauty know
Thy longing need & bend to thee.

Not in this life’s...Read more of this...

Hymn 78

by Isaac Watts
 The strength of Christ's love.

SS 8:5-7,13,14. 

[Who is this fair one in distress,
That travels from the wilderness?
And pressed with sorrows and with sins,
On her beloved Lord she leans.

This is the spouse of Christ our God,
Bought with the treasure of his blood;
And her request and her complaint
Is but the voice of every saint.]

"O let my name engraven stand
Both on thy...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet IX: If Poisonous Minerals And If That Tree

by John Donne
 If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And Mercy being easy, and glorious
To God; in his stern wrath, why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute...Read more of this...

Melancholetta

by Lewis Carroll
 With saddest music all day long
She soothed her secret sorrow:
At night she sighed "I fear 'twas wrong
Such cheerful words to borrow.
Dearest, a sweeter, sadder song
I'll sing to thee to-morrow." 

I thanked her, but I could not say
That I was glad to hear it:
I left the house at break of day,
And did not venture near it
Till time, I hoped, had...Read more of this...

Grif of the Bloody Hand

by William Topaz McGonagall
 In an immense wood in the south of Kent,
There lived a band of robbers which caused the people discontent;
And the place they infested was called the Weald,
Where they robbed wayside travellers and left them dead on the field. 

Their leader was called Grif, of the Bloody Hand,
And so well skilled in sword practice there's few could him withstand;
And sometimes...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXX

by William Shakespeare
 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many...Read more of this...

I drown my entire soul in your two eyes

by Emile Verhaeren
I drown my entire soul in your two eyes, and the mad rapture of that frenzied soul, so that, having been steeped in their gentleness and prayer, it may be returned to me brighter and of truer temper.
O for a union that refines the being, as two golden windows in the same apse cross their differently lucent fires and interpenetrate!
I...Read more of this...

In the footsteps of the walking air

by Kenneth Patchen
 In the footsteps of the walking air
Sky's prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe
And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying.

Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss
And a single drop of dark blood covers the earth.

Now is the China of the spirit at walking
In my reaches.
A sable organ sounds in my gathered will
And love's...Read more of this...

The Early Purges

by Seamus Heaney
 I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout 
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and...Read more of this...

Laus Deo

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel:
God's own voice is...Read more of this...

The Poets Calendar

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; 
Forward I look, and backward, and below 
I count, as god of avenues and gates, 
The years that through my portals come and go. 
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; 
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; 
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, 
My fires light...Read more of this...

H. Baptism

by George Herbert
 As he that sees a dark and shady grove, 
Stays not, but looks beyond it on the sky; 
So when I view my sins, mine eyes remove
More backward still, and to that water fly, 
Which is above the heav'ns, whose spring and rest 
Is in my dear Redeemer's pierced side.
O blessed streams! either ye do prevent
And stop our sins...Read more of this...

A Plantation Melody

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
De trees is bendin' in de sto'm,
De rain done hid de mountain's fo'm,
I 's 'lone an' in distress.
But listen, dah 's a voice I hyeah,
A-sayin' to me, loud an' cleah,
"Lay low in de wildaness."
De lightnin' flash, de bough sway low,
My po' sick hea't is trimblin' so,
It hu'ts my very breas'.
But him dat give de lightnin' powah
Jes' bids me in de...Read more of this...

I drown in sin—show me Thy clemency!

by Omar Khayyam
I drown in sin—show me Thy clemency!
My soul is dark—make me Thy light to see!
A heaven that must be earned by painful works,
I call a wage, not a gift fair and free....Read more of this...

Mountain Drinking Song

by Li Po
 To drown the ancient sorrows,
we drank a hundred jugs of wine
there in the beautiful night.
We couldn't go to bed with the moon so bright.

The finally the wine overcame us
and we lay down on the empty mountain--
the earth for a pillow,
and a blanket made of heaven...Read more of this...

The Lang Coortin

by Lewis Carroll
 The ladye she stood at her lattice high,
Wi' her doggie at her feet;
Thorough the lattice she can spy
The passers in the street, 

"There's one that standeth at the door,
And tirleth at the pin:
Now speak and say, my popinjay,
If I sall let him in." 

Then up and spake the popinjay
That flew abune her head:
"Gae let him in that tirls the...Read more of this...

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