Famous Flooded Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Prayer For My Daughter

...hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness ...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler


Charmides

...rough the shrine,
And seemed to be in some entranced swoon
Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon

Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor,
When from his nook up leapt the venturous lad,
And flinging wide the cedar-carven door
Beheld an awful image saffron-clad
And armed for battle! the gaunt Griffin glared
From the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared

Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled
The Gorgon's head its leaden eyeballs r...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Circulation

...And all at length are gathered in.
 --LOUISE BOGAN

By the time I came around to feeling pain
and woke up, moonlight
flooded the room. My arm lay paralyzed,
propped up like an old anchor under
your back. You were in a dream,
you said later, where you'd arrived
early for the dance. But after
a moment's anxiety you were okay
because it was really a sidewalk
sale, and the shoes you were wearing,
or not wearing, were fine for that.

 *

"Help me," I said. And tried to hoist
my...Read more of this...
by Carver, Raymond

Diving into the Wreck

...rd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go d...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Enoch Arden

...p `turn and turn about:'
When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger-made
Was master: then would Philip, his blue eyes
All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears,
Shriek out `I hate you, Enoch,' and at this
The little wife would weep for company,
And pray them not to quarrel for her sake,
And say she would be little wife to both. 

But when the dawn of rosy childhood past,
And the new warmth of life's ascending sun
Was felt by either, either fixt his heart
On that one girl; an...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord


Hurt Hawks

...ht.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality....Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson

Hymns Of The Marshes

...eart
And breathe it free, and breathe it free,
By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams
Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams.
Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies
A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies
Shine scant with one forked galaxy, --
The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie.

Oh, what if a sound should be made!
Oh, what if a bound should be laid
To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-s...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

Lazarus

...of what she saw now in its brief 
And infinite mystery that so frightened her 
That life became a terror. Tears again 
Flooded her eyes and overflowed. “No, Mary,”
She murmured slowly, hating her own words 
Before she heard them, “you are not so eager 
To see our brother as we see him now; 
Neither is he who gave him back to us. 
I was to be the simple one, as always,
And this was all for me.” She stared again 
Over among the trees where Lazarus, 
Who seemed to be a man who ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Pickthorn Manor

...t. His probings ranged All 
round his torment. Lady Eunice tried
To sooth him. So a week went by, and then His anguish 
flooded over; with clenched hands
Striving to stem his words, he told her plain Tony 
had seen them, "brands
Burning in Hell," the man had said. Again
Eunice described her vision, and how when
Awoke at last she had known dreadful pain.

LVI
He could not credit it, and misery fed Upon 
his spirit, day by day it grew.
To Gervase he forbade the house, and led T...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

September On Jessore Road

...0 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood 
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Bil...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Sohrab and Rustum

...unlopp'd trunk it was, and huge,
Still rough--like those which men in treeless plains
To build them boats fish from the flooded rivers,
Hyphasis or Hydaspes, when, high up
By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time
Hath made in Himalayan forests wrack,
And strewn the channels with torn boughs--so huge
The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck
One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside,
Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came
Thundering to earth, and leapt from Ru...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Double Image

...them say, was mine. They tattled
like green witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to s...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Generations of Men

...boy, 
As pale and dim as a match flame in the sun; 
He's groping in the cellar after jam, 
He thinks it's dark and it's flooded with daylight." 
"He's nothing. Listen. When I lean like this 
I can make out old Grandsir Stark distinctly,-- 
With his pipe in his mouth and his brown jug-- 
Bless you, it isn't Grandsir Stark, it's Granny, 
But the pipe's there and smoking and the jug. 
She's after cider, the old girl, she's thirsty; 
Here's hoping she gets her drink and gets out ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck

...his employ.
Through new-burst elm leaves filtered the white moon,
Who peered and splashed between the twinkling boughs,
Flooded the open spaces, and took flight
Before tall, serried houses in platoon,
Guarded by shadows. Past the Custom House
They took their hurried way in the Spring-scented night.

8
Before a door which fronted a canal
The boy halted. A dim tree-shaded spot.
The water lapped the stones in musical
And rhythmic tappings, and a galliot
Slumbered at anchor with ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Lady of the Lake

...espair,
     When rose Benledi's ridge in air;
     Who flagged upon Bochastle's heath,
     Who shunned to stem the flooded Teith,—
     For twice that day, from shore to shore,
     The gallant stag swam stoutly o'er.
     Few were the stragglers, following far,
     That reached the lake of Vennachar;
     And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
     The headmost horseman rode alone.
     VII.

     Alone, but with unbated zeal,
     That horseman plied the scourg...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Mary Gloster

...uiet and scummy and dark --
Full to her lower hatches and risin' steady. Hark!
That was the after-bulkhead. . . . She's flooded from stem to stern. . . .
'Never seen death yet, Dickie? . . . Well, now is your time to learn!...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Scholar Gypsy

...ed spray,
And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
Have I not passed thee on the wooden bridge,
Wrapped in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge?
And thou hast climbed the hill,
And gained the white brow of the Cumner range;
Turned once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall— 
Th...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Wanderer

...d spires and architraves 
To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut,

And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day 
Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, 
Between new towers to waken and new bliss 
Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way:

These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates, 
Coming to market with his morning load, 
The peasant found him early on his road 
To greet the sunrise at the city-gates,---

There where the meadows waken in its rays, 
Golden with mist...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

The Winter Scene

...rest, and for a tranquil hour
The lengthening bluish shadows on the snow
Stole down the orchard slope, and a rose light
Flooded the earth with beauty and with peace.
Then in the west behind the cedars black
The sinking sun stained red the winter dusk
With sullen flare upon the snowy ridge,--
As in a masterpiece by Hokusai,
Where on a background gray, with flaming breath
A scarlet dragon dies in dusky gold....Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss

Visitation

...er,

confusion, some accident to bring
the young humpback to grief. 
Don't they depend on a compass

lodged in the salt-flooded folds
of the brain, some delicate
musical mechanism to navigate

their true course? How many ways, 
in our century's late iron hours,
might we have led him to disaster?

That, in those days, was how
I'd come to see the world:
dark upon dark, any sense

of spirit an embattled flame
sparked against wind-driven rain
till pain snuffed it out. I thought,
...Read more of this...
by Doty, Mark

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