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Famous Galleys Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilde, Oscar
...e round world with nets of gold,
If hidden in our heart is found
The care that groweth never old?

What profit that our galleys ride,
Pine-forest-like, on every main?
Ruin and wreck are at our side,
Grim warders of the House of Pain.

Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?
Where is our English chivalry?
Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,
And sobbing waves their threnody.

O loved ones lying far away,
What word of love can dead lips send!
O wasted dust! O sensel...Read more of this...



by Fletcher, John Gould
...lusty bridegroom say,
 Welcome, light, of all befriended!

Pace out, you watery powers below;
 Let your feet,
Like the galleys when they row,
 Even beat;
Let your unknown measures, set
 To the still winds, tell to all
That gods are come, immortal, great,
 To honour this great nuptial!...Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...a Henry trademark, he would envy you,
especially the being through.

Too many journeys lie for him ahead,
too many galleys & page-proofs to be read,
he would like to lie down
in your sweet silence, to whom was not denied
the mysterious late excellence which is the crown
of our trials & our last bride....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...Queen
Because rich gold in every town is seen,
And on thy sapphire-lake in tossing pride
Of wind-filled vans thy myriad galleys ride
Beneath one flag of red and white and green.
O Fair and Strong! O Strong and Fair in vain!
Look southward where Rome's desecrated town
Lies mourning for her God-anointed King!
Look heaven-ward! shall God allow this thing?
Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down,
And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain.

VENICE....Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...
A will wakens: the admiral, lolling long at ease,
Has been commanded, overnight -- suddenly --:
In the first dawn, all galleys put to sea!
Waking then in autumn chill, amid the harbor medley,
The fragrance of pitch, pennants aloft, the butt
Of oars, all sails unfurled, the fleet
Awaits the great wind, radiant and deadly....Read more of this...



by Chesterton, G K
...name is mystery; 
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, 
They veil the plum?d lions on the galleys of St. Mark; 
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, 
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, 
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines 
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. 
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung 
...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...Over the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave,
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,

A gallant armament:
Each bark built out of a forest-tree,

Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black bull-hides,
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame,
To bear the playful billows' game:
So, each good ship...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...by the sea,
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery!
No longer now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria's purple waters used to flow.

O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia's royal warrior hath passed
Rome's lord...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...et,
 The cup we spilled in haste.

Now call I to my Captains --
 For council fly the sign --
Now leap their zealous galleys,
 Twelve-oared, across the brine.
To me the straiter prison,
 To me the heavier chain --
To me Diego Valdez,
 High Admiral of Spain!...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the Baltic;
Served before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia; 
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of those for war; 
Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea; 
For the mediæval ages, and before the mediæval ages; 
Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.

8
I see the European headsman; 
He stands mask’d, clothed in red, with huge legs, and strong naked arms, 
And leans o...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...he world began; 
The glory of ships is a light on the sea,
and a star in the story of man. 

When Homer sang of the galleys of Greece
that conquered the Trojan shore,
And Solomon lauded the barks of Tyre that
brought great wealth to his door, 
'Twas little they knew, those ancient men,
what would come of the sail and the oar. 

The Greek ships rescued the West from the East,
when they harried the Persians home; 
And the Roman ships were the wings of strength
that bore...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...k sweet wine;
A herdsman came from inland valleys,
Crying, the pirates drove his swine
To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys.
I called my battle-breaking men
And my loud brazen battle-cars
From rolling vale and rivery glen;
And under the blinking of the stars
Fell on the pirates by the deep,
And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:
These hands won many a torque of gold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.

But slowly, as I sho...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...of mine, my heart, my home--
Mine and my pride--evil might visit there!
It was for Sula and her naked port,
Prey to the galleys of the Algerine,
Our city Sula, that I drove my price--
For love of Sula and for love of her.
The twain were woven--gold on sackcloth--twined
Past any sundering till God shall judge
The evil and the good.
Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
 brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...OVER the sea our galleys went, 
With cleaving prows in order brave 
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave-- 
 A gallant armament: 
Each bark built out of a forest-tree 
 Left leafy and rough as first it grew, 
And nail'd all over the gaping sides, 
Within and without, with black bull-hides, 
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame, 
To bear the playful billows' game; 
So, each ...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...fter Valery)


O Sea! ... 'Tis I, risen from death once more
To hear the waves' harmonious roar
And see the galleys, sharp, in dawn's great awe
Raised from the dark by the rising and gold oar.

My fickle hands sufficed to summon kings
Their salt beards amused my fingers, deft and pure.
I wept. They sang of triumphs now obscure:
And the first abyss flooded the hull as if with falling wings.

I hear the profound horns and trumpets of war
Matching the...Read more of this...

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