Famous Fishers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Grey Day

...asty girth 
Toiling--heroic, comical! 

I wonder how that merchant's crew 
Have ever found the will! 
I wonder what the fishers do 
To keep them toiling still! 
I wonder how the heart of man 
Has patience to live out its span, 
Or wait until its dreams come true....Read more of this...
by Moody, William Vaughn


Astrophel and Stella

...are, insteed
Of Atlas tyrd, your wisedoms heau'nly sway.
For me, while you discourse of courtly tides,
Of cunningest fishers in most troubled streames,
Of straying waies, when valiant Errour guides,
Meanewhile my heart confers with Stellas beames,
And is e'en woe that so sweet comedie
By such vnsuted speech should hindred be. 
LII 

A strife is growne between Vertue and Loue,
While each pretends that Stella must be his:
Her eyes, her lips, her all, saith Loue, do ...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip

Charmides

...with oil, and from the hold
Brought out his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled,

And a rich robe stained with the fishers' juice
Which of some swarthy trader he had bought
Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse,
And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought,
And by the questioning merchants made his way
Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day

Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud,
Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet
Crept to the fane unnoti...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Coromandel Fishers

...Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light, 
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. 
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free, 
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea! 

No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of ...Read more of this...
by Naidu, Sarojini

Faces

...the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad
 at
 the
 back-top; 
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces
 of
 orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face; 
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or despised face; 
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children; 
The face of an amour, the face of veneration; 
The face as...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


How Good Are The Poor

...shout: 
 While to wild winds, to rocks, to midnight drear, 
 The ominous old ocean sobs without. 
 
 Poor wives of fishers! Ah! 'tis sad to say, 
 Our sons, our husbands, all that we love best, 
 Our hearts, our souls, are on those waves away, 
 Those ravening wolves that know not ruth, nor rest. 
 
 Think how they sport with these beloved forms; 
 And how the clarion-blowing wind unties 
 Above their heads the tresses of the storms: 
 Perchance even now the chil...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Kallundborg Church ( From The Tent on the Beach)

...nger who told his name.

Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune
By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon;
And the fishers of Zealand hear him still
Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.

And seaward over its groves of birch
Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church
Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,
Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

Night in the Pavilion

...g shadow. Countryside cries from a thousand homes hearing news of the fighting, Barbaric songs here and there rise from fishers and woodsmen. Sleeping Dragon and Leaping Horse both ended in yellow dirt; Waiting for news of worldly affairs brings me useless grief....Read more of this...
by Fu, Du

On the Seashore

.... Children have their play on the seashore of worlds. 
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets. 
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby'...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

Orlie Wilde

...found
The boat aleak alarmingly. . . .
I turned and looked upon the sea,
Whose every wave seemed mocking me;
I saw the fishers' sails once more--
In dimmer distance than before;
I saw the sea-bird wheeling by,
With foolish wish that _I_ could fly:
I thought of firm earth, home and friends--
I thought of everything that tends
To drive a man to frenzy and
To wholly lose his own command;
I thought of all my waywardness--
Thought of a mother's deep distress;
Of youthful follies ...Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb

Peach Blossom Journey

...im in and ask about his home.
As brightness came, the lanes had all been swept of blossom,
By dusk, along the water the fishers and woodsmen returned.
To escape the troubled world they had first left men's society,
They live as if become immortals, no reason now to return.
In that valley they knew nothing of the way we live outside,
From within our world we gaze afar at empty clouds and hills.
Who would not doubt that magic place so hard to find,
The fisher's worldly heart co...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang

Rosabelle

...Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day. 

‘The blackening wave is edged with white; 
To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; 
The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, 
Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh. 

‘Last night the gifted Seer did view 
A wet shroud swathed round lady gay; 
Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch; 
Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?’ 

’Tis not because Lord Lindesay’s heir 
Tonight at Roslin leads the ball, 
But that my lady-mother there 
Sits lonely in her ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

Seashore

...Children have their play on the seashore of worlds. 

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. 
Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, 
while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. 
They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets. 

The sea surges up with laughter 
and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach. 
Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, 
even like a mother while rocking her ...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

Song of the Broad-Axe

...acters
 and
 fun,

Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river—dwellers on coasts and off
 coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. 

The shapes arise! 
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets; 
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads; 
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of barges, towns, lake and canal craft, river craft. 

The shapes arise! 
Ship-ya...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of Fishers Boarding-House

...'T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house,
 Where sailor-men reside,
And there were men of all the ports
 From Mississip to Clyde,
And regally they spat and smoked,
 And fearsomely they lied.

They lied about the purple Sea
 That gave them scanty bread,
They lied about the Earth beneath,
 The Heavens overhead,
For they had looked too often on
 Black rum when t...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Everlasting Mercy

...sings alone. 
Then down, past that white-blossomed pond, 
And past the chestnut trees beyond, 
And past the bridge the fishers knew, 
Where yellow flag flowers once grew, 
Where we'd go gathering cops of clover, 
In sunny June times long since over. 
O clover-cops half white, half red, 
O beauty from beyond the dead. 
O blossom, key to earth and heaven, 
O souls that Christ has new forgiven. 
Then down the hill to gipsies' pitch 
By where the brook clucks in the ditch. 
A gi...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Story of Ung

...them, peering and pushing and still --
Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill --
Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low:
"Yea, they are like -- and it may be -- But how does the Picture-man know?"

"Ung -- hath he slept with the Aurochs -- watched where the Mastodon roam?
Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head -- followed the Sabre-tooth home?
Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us so,
How is there truth in his image...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Sycamores

...the swarming shad, 

And the bulging nets swept shoreward 
With their silver-sided haul, 
Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, 
He was merriest of them all. 

When, among the jovial huskers 
Love stole in at Labor's side 
With the lusty airs of England 
Soft his Celtic measures vied. 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake 
And the merry fair's carouse; 
Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 
And the Woman of Three Cows, 

By the blazing hearths of winter 
Pleasant seemed his simple ta...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The Three Fishers

...1 Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
2 Away to the west as the sun went down;
3 Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
4 And the children stood watching them out of the town;
5 For men must work, and women must weep,
6 And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
7 Though the harbour bar be moaning.

8 Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower...Read more of this...
by Kingsley, Charles

Upon Appleton House to My Lord Fairfax

...he same.
But in more decent Order tame;
You Heaven's Center, Nature's Lap.
And Paradice's only Map.

But now the Salmon-Fishers moist
Their Leathern Boats begin to hoist;
And, like Antipodes in Shoes,
Have shod their Heads in their Canoos.
How Tortoise like, but not so slow,
These rational Amphibii go?
Let's in: for the dark Hemisphere
Does now like one of them appear....Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

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