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Famous Fishes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...et's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wh...Read more of this...



by Smart, Christopher
...; 
They that make music, or that mock, 
The quail, the brave domestic cock, 
 The raven, swan, and jay. 

 XXIV 
Of fishes—ev'ry size and shape, 
Which nature frames of light escape, 
 Devouring man to shun: 
The shells are in the wealthy deep, 
The shoals upon the surface leap, 
 And love the glancing sun. 

 XXV 
Of beasts—the beaver plods his task, 
While the sleek tigers roll and bask, 
 Nor yet the shades arouse: 
Her cave the mining coney scoops;
Where o'er the ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e less generous than they!
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning! 
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be
 enough
 for myself. 

20
I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes, 
Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself. 

America isolated, yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself?
These States—what are they except ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...And tremulous opal-hued anemones
Will wave their purple fringes where we tread
Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies
Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread
The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck,
And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.'

But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun
With gaudy pennon flying passed away
Into his brazen House, and one by one
The little yellow stars began to stray
Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed
She ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...s head upon a tuft of straggling weeds,
To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads,
Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes' tails.
And so he kept, until the rosy veils
Mantling the east, by Aurora's peering hand
Were lifted from the water's breast, and fann'd
Into sweet air; and sober'd morning came
Meekly through billows:--when like taper-flame
Left sudden by a dallying breath of air,
He rose in silence, and once more 'gan fare
Along his fated way.

 Far had he r...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...to the joy I seek,--
For yet the past doth prison me. The rill,
Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill
With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn,
And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel's barn.
Its bottom will I strew with amber shells,
And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells.
Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine,
And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine.
I will entice this crystal rill to trace
Love's silver name upon the meadow's face.
I'l...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...nd Marquis' line, 
 Barbaric lords, who amid war's rapine 
 Bore gilded saints upon their banners still 
 Painted on fishes' skin with cunning skill. 
 Here Geth, who to the Slaves cried "Onward go," 
 And Mundiaque and Ottocar—Plato 
 And Ladisläus Kunne; and Welf who bore 
 These words upon his shield his foes before; 
 "Nothing there is I fear." Otho blear-eyed, 
 Zultan and Nazamustus, and beside 
 The later Spignus, e'en to Spartibor 
 Of triple vision, and ye...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ee neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises. 

Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats; 
You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum; 
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not; 
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, 
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement; 
And I shall look again in a score or two of ag...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...arrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes, --
Hugged her and kissed her;
Squeezed and caressed her;
Stretched up their dishes,
Panniers and plates:
"Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and suck them,
Pomegranates, figs."

"Good folk," sa...Read more of this...

by Homer,
....

[Line 33] And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope calmed her great heart for all her trouble. . . . and the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea rang with her immortal voice: and her queenly mother heard her.

Bitter pain seized her heart, and she...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...oar:
Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call,
And Shadwell they resound from Aston Hall.
About thy boat the little fishes throng,
As at the morning toast, that floats along.
Sometimes as prince of thy harmonious band
Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing hand.
St. Andre's feet ne'er kept more equal time,
Not ev'n the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme:
Though they in number as in sense excel;
So just, so like tautology they fell,
That, pale with envy, Singlet...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ane. Even more,
I offer you the fishing, and am proud That you should find 
it pleasant from this shore.
Nobody fishes now, my husband used To angle daily, and I too 
with him.
He loved the spotted trout, and pike, and dace. He 
even had a whim
That flies my fingers tied swiftly confused
The greater fish. And he must be excused,
Love weaves odd fancies in a lonely place."

XV
She sighed because it seemed so long ago, Those 
days with Everard; unthinkin...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...l of common employments! full of grain and trees. 

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem! 
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem. 

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning! 
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—I will have thousands of
 globes,
 and all time. 

2
O the engineer’s joys!
To go with a locomotive! 
To hear the hiss of stea...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...>

 In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly
 In the claw tracks of hawks
On a seizing sky; small fishes glide
 Through wynds and shells of drowned
Ship towns to pastures of otters. He
 In his slant, racking house
And the hewn coils of his trade perceives
 Herons walk in their shroud,

 The livelong river's robe
Of minnows wreathing around their prayer;
 And far at sea he knows,
Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end
 Under a serpent cloud,
Dolphins...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...
A ripple on the water grew, 
A school of porpoise flashed in view. 
"Take, eat," he said, "and be content; 
These fishes in my stead are sent 
By Him who gave the tangled ram 
To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books, 
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 
The ancient teachers never dumb 
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 
In moons and tides and weather wise, 
He read the clouds as prophecies, 
And foul or fair could well divine, 
By many an o...Read more of this...

by Johnson, James Weldon
...s hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun, 
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With al...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...
Because he spring-gunned his preserves. 
Through parson's glass my nozzle swishes 
Because he stood for loaves and fishes, 
but parson's glass I spared a tittle. 
He give me a orange once when little, 
And he who gives a child a treat 
Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street, 
And he who gives a child a home 
Build palaces in Kingdom come 
and she who gives a baby birth 
Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth, 
For life is joy, and mind is fruit, 
And body's precious e...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ngebis, the diver, cared not; 
Four great logs had he for firewood, 
One for each moon of the winter, 
And for food the fishes served him.
By his blazing fire he sat there, 
Warm and merry, eating, laughing, 
Singing, "O Kabibonokka, 
You are but my fellow-mortal!"
Then Kabibonokka entered, 
And though Shingebis, the diver, 
Felt his presence by the coldness, 
Felt his icy breath upon him, 
Still he did not cease his singing, 
Still he did not leave his laughing, 
Only tu...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...no wight but Christ *sans faille.* *without fail*
Five thousand folk it was as great marvaille
With loaves five and fishes two to feed
God sent his foison* at her greate need. *abundance

She drived forth into our ocean
Throughout our wilde sea, till at the last
Under an hold*, that nempnen** I not can, *castle **name
Far in Northumberland, the wave her cast
And in the sand her ship sticked so fast
That thennes would it not in all a tide: 
The will of Christ was t...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...wash the sands and headlands with my tide; 
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine; 
Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide. 
By me all things unclean are purified, 
By me the souls of men washed white again; 
E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died 
Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain. 

March

I Martius am! Once first, and now the third! 
To lead the Year was my appointed place; 
A mortal dispossessed me by a word, 
And set there Janus with the do...Read more of this...

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