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Famous Ganges Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...f eloquence, 
And poesy divine; imperial Rome! 
Whose wide dominion reach'd o'er half the globe; 
Whose eagle flew o'er Ganges to the East, 
And in the West far to the British isles. 
No more of Britain, and her kings renown'd, 
Edward's and Henry's thunderbolts of war; 
Her chiefs victorious o'er the Gallic foe; 
Illustrious senators, immortal bards, 
And wise philosophers, of these no more. 
A Theme more new, tho' not less noble claims 
Our ev'ry thought on this aus...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...l the flowers the dead love best.

For some are by the Delhi walls,
And many in the Afghan land,
And many where the Ganges falls
Through seven mouths of shifting sand.

And some in Russian waters lie,
And others in the seas which are
The portals to the East, or by
The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.

O wandering graves! O restless sleep!
O silence of the sunless day!
O still ravine! O stormy deep!
Give up your prey! Give up your prey!

And thou whose wounds are n...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...hould fondly part
From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!
Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade
Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!
To one so friendless the clear freshet yields
A bitter coolness, the ripe grape is sour:
Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour
Of native air--let me but die at home."

 Endymion to heaven's airy dome
Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,
When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows
His head through thorny...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...was prophesying of her glory;
And in her wide imagination stood
Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes
By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles.
Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,
So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk
Shed from the broadest of her elephants.
Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve,
Upon his elbow rais'd, all prostrate else,
Shadow'd Enceladus; once tame and mild
As grazing ox unworried in the meads;
Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth,
He meditated...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...-Morin
Curls up on the solid earth. The Inn
Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack's
Galvanized. The Ganges is liquid snow by now;
The Vyatka's ice-gray. The once-molten Tennessee s
Curdled. The Japurá is a pack of ice. Gelid
The Columbia's gray loam banks. The Don's merely
A giant icicle. The Niger freezes, slowly.
The interminable Lena plods on
But the Purus' mercurial waters are icy, grim
With cold. The Loing is choked with fr...Read more of this...



by Walcott, Derek
...ot see these days
again; our flags sank with the sunset on the dhows
of Egypt; we ruled rivers as huge as the Nile,
the Ganges, and the Congo, we tamed, we ruled
you when our empires reached their blazing peak."
This was a small creek somewhere in the world,
never mind where - victory was in sight.
Koenig laughed and spat in the brown creek.
The mosquitoes now were singing to the night
that rose up from the river, the fog uncurled
under the mangroves. Koenig c...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...rom the north and silver from the west, 
Wines from the south, and spices from the east; 
From Gambo gold, and from the Ganges gems-- 
Take a short voyage underneath the Thames, 
Once a deep river, now with timber floored, 
And shrunk, least navigable, to a ford. 

Now (nothing more at Chatham left to burn), 
The Holland squadron leisurely return, 
And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles, 
To Ruyter's triumph lead the captive Charles. 
The pleasing sight he often does ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...bbery; 
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape; 
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse); 
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it. 
So that's the foreground. An old chapel adds
Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it 
A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes;
Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes, 
They carp at every gust th...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...rce of prey 
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids, 
On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs 
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams; 
But in his way lights on the barren plains 
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive 
With sails and wind their cany waggons light: 
So, on this windy sea of land, the Fiend 
Walked up and down alone, bent on his prey; 
Alone, for other creature in this place, 
Living or lifeless, to be found was none; 
None yet, but store herea...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...d as far antarctick; and in length, 
West from Orontes to the ocean barred 
At Darien ; thence to the land where flows 
Ganges and Indus: Thus the orb he roamed 
With narrow search; and with inspection deep 
Considered every creature, which of all 
Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found 
The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field. 
Him after long debate, irresolute 
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose 
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom 
To ent...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...he retrospect, brought forward; 
The old, most populous, wealthiest of Earth’s lands, 
The streams of the Indus and the Ganges, and their many affluents;
(I, my shores of America walking to-day, behold, resuming all,) 
The tale of Alexander, on his warlike marches, suddenly dying, 
On one side China, and on the other side Persia and Arabia, 
To the south the great seas, and the Bay of Bengal; 
The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,
Old occult Brahma, in...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...campion wide, 
Where all this world's pride once was situate. 
No blame to thee, whosoever dost abide 
By Nile, or Ganges, or Tigris, or Euphrate, 
Ne Africa thereof guilty is, nor Spain, 
Nor the bold people by the Thame's brinks, 
Nor the brave, warlike brood of Alemagne, 
Nor the born soldier which Rhine running drinks; 
Thou only cause, O civil fury, art 
Which sowing in the Aemathian fields thy spite, 
Didst arm thy hand against thy proper heart; 
To th' end that wh...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
.... 

6
I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that of India; 
I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.

I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human forms; 
I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth—oracles, sacrificers, brahmins,
 sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters; 
I see where druids walked the groves of Mona—I see the mistletoe and vervain; 
I see the temples of the...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, 
Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. 

From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, 
The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; 
They do not see, within the opened sky, 
The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. 

In every clime and under every sun, 
Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; 
And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye 
And mingles with your madness, irony!"...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
..., upon the top-mast's head,
"Hail'd the red Eye of coming day.
"The Tanyan's back my mother bore;
"And oft the wavy Ganges' roar
"Lull'd her to rest, as on she past--
"'Mid the hot sands and burning blast!
"And oft beneath the Banyan tree
"She sate and fondly nourish'd me;
"And while the noontide hour past slow,
"I felt her breast with kindness glow.

"Where'er I turn my sleepless eyes,
"No cheek so dark as mine, I see;
"For Europe's Suns, with softer dyes
"Mark Europ...Read more of this...

by Borges, Jorge Luis
...s wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.

It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its roun...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...caravan, 
Arriving like a rush of mighty wind, 
Cleaving the fields of space, as doth the swan 
Some silver stream (say Ganges, Nile, or Inde, 
Or Thames, or Tweed), and 'midst them an old man 
With an old soul, and both extremely blind, 
Halted before the gate, and in his shroud 
Seated their fellow traveller on a cloud. 

XXIV 

But bringing up the rear of this bright host 
A Spirit of a different aspect waves 
His wings, like thunder-clouds above some coast 
Whose barr...Read more of this...

by Borges, Jorge Luis
...ht of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream....Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...God’s guidance – being a poet I chose the latter – 

Brought me to dip my ankle like an amah’s blessing

Into the Holy Ganges of prelude and grosse fuge 

Of ego and unconscious, wandering alone

In uncharted waters and faltering

Until I raised my hand and found it grasped

By your firm fingers pulling inexorably shoreward.

Did I know, how could I know, madness 

Would descend on my family, first a sad grandfather

Who had wrought destruction on three generations

Incl...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...e no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.  I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundre...Read more of this...

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