Famous Gull Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sun and Shadow

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her...Read more of this...

Pleasures

by Denise Levertov
 I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board--

tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce
the heart, but fragile, substance
belying design. Or a fruit, mamey,

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the...Read more of this...

The Unbeliever

by Elizabeth Bishop
 He sleeps on the top of a mast. - Bunyan


He sleeps on the top of a mast
with his eyes fast closed.
The sails fall away below him
like the sheets of his bed,
leaving out in the air of the night the sleeper's head.

Asleep he was transported there,
asleep he curled
in a gilded ball on the mast's top,
or climbed inside
a gilded bird, or...Read more of this...

Flight

by Robert William Service
 On silver sand where ripples curled
I counted sea-gulls seven;
Shy, secret screened from all the world,
And innocent as heaven.
They did not of my nearness know,
For dawn was barely bright,
And they were still, like spots of snow
In that pale, pearly light.

Then one went forth unto the sea
That rippled up in gold,
And there were rubies flashing free
From out its wing-unfold;
It ducked and...Read more of this...

Seagull from Afar

by Dejan Stojanovic
Lie on the ground and listen to the grass, 
Hear the silent signals from outer space, 
Dream by making and make by dreaming, 
Feel what the trees bathed in sunlight feel, 
Gaze far to see the sea-gull emerging from the sea, 
Imagine that today is the birth of the world and greet it, 
Greet the old bird. 
...Read more of this...

The Long Trail

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
 And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
Singing: "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the dover,
 "And your English summer's done."
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
 You have heard the song --...Read more of this...

Sea Gull (Leith Docks, 1995)

by Omer Tarin
Once before I've heard this
anguished cry

A long-drawn note of many-lettered woe,
The great open beak straining 
against the roar of raging surf;

Head, thrown back, taut
against the distant sails

Anger flickering in eyes flecked with amber,
rolling in lonely knowledge,
this bond servant of the sea,
tied by its giant wingspan 
to the torturous flight of sainthood

Martyred
in its terrible existence
murdered
by the yellow fog of banality

Victim 
to...Read more of this...

The Sun Weilds Mercy

by Charles Bukowski
 and the sun weilds mercy
but like a jet torch carried to high,
and the jets whip across its sight
and rockets leap like toads,
and the boys get out the maps
and pin-cuishon the moon,
old green cheese,
no life there but too much on earth:
our unwashed India boys
crosssing their legs,playing pipes,
starving with sucked in bellies,
watching the snakes volute
like beautiful women in the hungry air;
the...Read more of this...

Nocturnal Reflections While Travelling

by Du Fu
 Gently grass soft wind shore Tall mast alone night boat Stars fall flat fields broad Moon rises great river flows Name not literary works mark Official should old sick stop Flutter flutter what place seem Heaven earth one sand gull Gentle breeze on grass by the shore, The boat's tall mast alone at night. Stars fall...Read more of this...

Beauty

by Charles Baudelaire
 Say not of beauty she is good, 
Or aught but beautiful, 
Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood 
Her wild wings of a gull.

Call her not wicked; that word's touch 
Consumes her like a curse; 
But love her not too much, too much, 
For that is even worse.

O, she is neither good nor bad, 
But innocent and wild!...Read more of this...

Pau-Puk-Keewis

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
It was he who in his frenzy
Whirled these...Read more of this...

Grey Gull

by Robert William Service
 'Twas on an iron, icy day
I saw a pirate gull down-plane,
And hover in a wistful way
Nigh where my chickens picked their grain.
An outcast gull, so grey and old,
Withered of leg I watched it hop,
By hunger goaded and by cold,
To where each fowl full-filled its crop.

They hospitably welcomed it,
And at the food rack gave it place;
It ate and ate, it...Read more of this...

Demon And Beast

by William Butler Yeats
 For certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
Though I had long perned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire.
I saw my freedom won
And all laugh in the sun.

The glittering eyes in a death's head
Of old Luke Wadding's portrait said
Welcome, and the Ormondes all
Nodded upon the wall,
And...Read more of this...

Veni Creator

by Bliss Carman
 I

LORD of the grass and hill, 
Lord of the rain, 
White Overlord of will, 
Master of pain, 

I who am dust and air 
Blown through the halls of death, 
Like a pale ghost of prayer,— 
I am thy breath. 

Lord of the blade and leaf, 
Lord of the bloom, 
Sheer Overlord of grief, 
Master of doom, 

Lonely as wind...Read more of this...

A Spring

by Marcin Malek
Long stalks of rain
are growing from the skies
down towards ash-black soil,
softer than deer hearts
frozen in concentration
at river banks

Everything that is not here
lies beyond these waters – more effusive
than a fisherman’s song,
when come evening time
they sail back to theirs rocky homes
settled at Shannon’s ridges
winding like a maggot in a downpour
and greener still
than eyes of women
that bear the same name

Wise men of...Read more of this...

The Song of the Dead

by Rudyard Kipling
 Hear now the Song of the Dead -- in the North by the torn berg-edges --
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South -- in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

Elegy IV: The Perfume

by John Donne
 Once, and but once found in thy company,
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is questioned there
By all the men that have been robed that year,
So am I (by this traiterous means surprized)
By thy hydroptic father catechized.
Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice,
Though he...Read more of this...

Angels Of The Love Affair

by Anne Sexton
 "Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that...Read more of this...

Filthy Savior

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
  Look at this storm, the idiot,
pouring its heart out here, of all places,
an industrial suburb on a Sunday, 
soaking nothing but cinder-block
and parking lots,

 wasting its breath on smokeless 
smoke-stacks, not even a trash can 
to send rumbling through the streets.
And that lightning bolt, forking itself 
to death, to hit 

 nothing — what a waste. 
What if...Read more of this...

Manuelzinho

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)—
a sort of inheritance; white,
in your thirties now, and supposed
to supply me with vegetables,
but you don't; or you won't; or you can't
get the idea through your brain—
the world's worst gardener since Cain.
Titled above me, your gardens
ravish my eyes. You edge
the beds of silver cabbages
with red carnations, and lettuces
mix with alyssum. And then
umbrella ants arrive,
or...Read more of this...

Hawker the Standard Bearer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The grey gull sat on a floating whale, 
On a floating whale sat he, 
And he told his tale of the storm and the gale, 
And the ships that he saw with steam and sail, 
As he flew by the Northern Sea. 
"I have seen a sign that is strange and new, 
That I never before did see: 
A...Read more of this...

The Derelict

by Rudyard Kipling
 And reports the derelict Mary Pollock still at sea.
 SHIPPING NEWS.


 I was the staunchest of our fleet
 Till the sea rose beneath our feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
 Into his pits he stamped my crew,
 Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

 Man made me, and my will
 Is to my maker still,
Whom...Read more of this...

Stuffed

by Carol Ann Duffy
 I put two yellow peepers in an owl.
Wow. I fix the grin of Crocodile.
Spiv. I sew the slither of an eel. 
I jerk, kick-start, the back hooves of a mule.
Wild. I hold the red rag to a bull.
Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.

I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.
Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.
Splayed....Read more of this...

Translation From the Gull Language

by Thomas Moore
 'Twas grav'd on the Stone of Destiny,
In letters four, and letters three;
And ne'er did the King of the Gulls go by
But those awful letters scar'd his eye;
For he knew that a Prophet Voice had said
"As long as those words by man were read,
The ancient race of the Gulls should ne'er
One hour of peace or plenty share."
But years and years...Read more of this...

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