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Famous Foundered Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Crowley, Aleister
...igh-pooped galleon
Went marvellously, majestically on
Full-sailed, while every other braver bark
Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark.

Then Easter, and the days of all delight!
God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight,
While above all, true centre of our world,
True source of light, our great love passion-pearled
Gave all its life and splendour to the sea
Above whose tides stood our stability.

Then sudden and fierce, no monitory moan,
Smote the mad misch...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...url
In all their amethystine panoply
Of diamonded mail, and we will mark
The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark,

Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold
Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep
His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold,
And we will see the painted dolphins sleep
Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks
Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous
flocks.

And tremulous opal-hued anemones
Will wave their pur...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
.... BRO. Methought so too; what should it be?
 ELD. BRO. For
certain.
Either some one, like us, night-foundered here,
Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at worst,
Some roving robber calling to his fellows.
SEC. BRO. Heaven keep my sister! Again, again, and near!
Best draw, and stand upon our guard.
 ELD. BRO. I'll hallo!
If he be friendly, he comes well: if not,
Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us!

 The ATTENDANT SPIRIT, h...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...est he passed away.

Thought Evernight he back was borne
on black and roaring waves that ran
o'er leagues unlit and foundered shores
that drowned before the Days began,
until he hears on strands of pearl
where end the world the music long,
where ever-foaming billows roll
the yellow gold and jewels wan.

He saw the Mountain silent rise
where twilight lies upon the knees
of Valinor, and Eldamar
beheld afar beyond the seas.

A wanderer escaped from night
to haven whi...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...lm
tree at three in the afternoon
by a hot sea
and a river, in Egypt, Tobago

Her salt marsh dries in the heat
where he foundered
without armor.
He exchanged an empire for her beads of sweat,

the uproar of arenas,
the changing surf
of senators, for
this silent ceiling over silent sand -

this grizzled bear, whose fur,
moulting, is silvered -
for this quick fox with her
sweet stench. By sleep dismembered,

his head
is in Egypt, his feet
in Rome, his groin a desert
tre...Read more of this...



by Russell, George William
...with phantom hopes and fears,
Where my star that rose dream-laden, moving to the mystic crown,
On the yellow moon-rock foundered and my joy and dreams went down.
As a child with hands uplifted peering through the cloudless miles
Bent the Mighty Mother o’er me shining all with eyes and smiles:
“Come up hither, child, my darling”: waving to the habitations,
Thrones, and starry kings around her, dark embattled planet nations.
There the mighty rose in greeting, as their ...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...g forest, the green heat;
then, on some sandbar, a mirage ahead:
fabric of muslin sails, spiderweb rigging,
a schooner, foundered on black river mud,
was rising slowly up from the riverbed,
and a top-hatted native reading an inverted
newspaper.
 "Where's our Queen?" Koenig shouted.
"Where's our Kaiser?"
 The ****** disappeared.
Koenig felt that he himself was being read
like the newspaper or a hundred-year-old novel.
"The Queen dead! Kaiser dead!" the voices s...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three.
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...reated hugest that swim th' ocean-stream. 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, 
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence 
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 
And high permission ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ied him 
As many miles aloft. That fury stayed-- 
Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, 
Nor good dry land--nigh foundered, on he fares, 
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, 
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. 
As when a gryphon through the wilderness 
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, 
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth 
Had from his wakeful custody purloined 
The guarded gold; so eagerly the Fiend 
O'er bog or steep, through ...Read more of this...

by de la Mare, Walter
...In sea-cold Lyonesse,
When the Sabbath eve shafts down
On the roofs, walls, belfries
Of the foundered town,
The Nereids pluck their lyres
Where the green translucency beats,
And with motionless eyes at gaze
Make ministrely in the streets. 

And the ocean water stirs
In salt-worn casement and porch.
Plies the blunt-nosed fish
With fire in his skull for torch.
And the ringing wires resound;
And the unearthly lovely weep,
In lament of the ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...iends 
Laid out around him with their grave-clothes on,
And this life done for them; but something else 
There was that foundered reason, overwhelmed it, 
And with a chilled, intuitive rebuff 
Beat back the self-cajoling sophistries 
That his half-tutored thought would half-project.

What was it, then? Had he become transformed 
And hardened through long watches and long grief 
Into a loveless, feelingless dead thing 
That brooded like a man, breathed like a man,— 
Did ev...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...fate they bewailed. 

Then into the jolly-boat and lifeboat jumped fifteen men in all,
And immediately the steamer foundered, which did their hearts appal,
As the good ship sank beneath the briny wave,
But they thanked God fervently that did them save. 

Oh! it was a miracle how any of them were saved,
But it was by the aid of God, and how the crew behaved;
Because God helps those that help themselves,
And those that don't try to do so are silly elves. 

So the t...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...the jolly, jolly mariners:
 "Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we!
 If we worked the ship together
 Till she foundered in foul weather,
 Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?"

Then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard:
 "Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;
 But Thy arm was strong to save,
 And it touched us on the wave,
 And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the sea."

Then cried the so...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...Foundered March 24. 1878


 1

The Eurydice—it concerned thee, O Lord:
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
 Some asleep unawakened, all un-
warned, eleven fathoms fallen 

 2

Where she foundered! One stroke
Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
 And flockbells off the aerial
Downs' forefalls beat to the burial. 

 3

For did she pride her, f...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...ar he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

"Yes . . ." that peculiar
affirmative. "Yes . . ."
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means "Life's like that.
We know it (also death)."
...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...rior of a conch.
Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke us.
Around our bed the baronial furniture
Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.
Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.
We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.

Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.
Two of us in a place meant for ten more-
Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,
Our voice...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...othing blossoms but the sky 
That hastens over them where they endure 
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods, 
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom. 

O my brave brown companions, when your souls 
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead 
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war 
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent. 
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass 
Battalions and battalions...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...nd. To thee
I own my weakness. Not for me
To sing the enfranchised nations' glee,
Or count the cost
Of warships foundered far at sea
And battles lost.

High on the far-seen, sunny hills,
Morning-content my bosom fills;
Well-pleased, I trace the wandering rills
And learn their birth.
Far off, the clash of sovereign wills
May shake the earth.

The nimble circuit of the wheel,
The uncertain poise of merchant weal,
Heaven of famine, fire and steel
When nations...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things