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Famous Gulls Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kees, Weldon
...blowing, dark against the sky,
It was as though the unsubstantial waves held up
His slender and inviolate feet. The gulls flew over,
Dropping, crying alone; thin ragged lengths of cloud
Drifted in bars across the sun. There on the shore
The crowd's response was instantaneous. He
Handled it well, I thought--the gait, the tilt of the head, just right.
Long streaks of light were blinding on the waves.
And then we knew our work well worth the time:
The days of...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...become a part of that,
 whatever it
 is; 
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slowly flapping, with the myriads of gulls
 wintering
 along
 the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding; 
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the
 Brazos, the
 Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters
 laughing
 and
 skipping and running;
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paum...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...les in their limbs
All the horses of his haul of miracles
Gallop through the arched, green farms,

Trot and gallop with gulls upon them
And thunderbolts in their manes.
O Rome and Sodom To-morrow and London
The country tide is cobbled with towns

And steeples pierce the cloud on her shoulder
And the streets that the fisherman combed
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
And his loin was a hunting flame

Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair
And terribly lead him...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...ange your language you must change your life.

I cannot right old wrongs.
Waves tire of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues

Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.

One I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there is no room at the trough.

I watch the best minds rot like dogs
for scraps of flavour.
I am nearing middle
age, burnt skin
peels from my hand like paper,...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...once, upon this main,
And my boat danc'd in every creek and bay;
Rough billows were my home by night and day,--
The sea-gulls not more constant; for I had
No housing from the storm and tempests mad,
But hollow rocks,--and they were palaces
Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease:
Long years of misery have told me so.
Aye, thus it was one thousand years ago.
One thousand years!--Is it then possible
To look so plainly through them? to dispel
A thousand years with backwa...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...ve, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls 
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
Their loves in wood and plain—and God renews 
His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all, 
From life’s minute beginnings, up at last 
To man—the consummation of this scheme 
Of being, the completion of this sphere 
Of life: whose attributes had here and there...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...f prey contending, 
Saw a gleam of light above him, 
Shining through the ribs of Nahma, 
Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, 
Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering, 
Gazing at him through the opening, 
Heard them saying to each other, 
"'T is our brother, Hiawatha!"
And he shouted from below them, 
Cried exulting from the caverns: 
"O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! 
I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; 
Make the rifts a little larger, 
With your claws the openings widen, 
Set me fr...Read more of this...

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...many windows, 
I have brothers, friends, 
And a prison cell with a cold window. 
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls, 
I have my own view, 
And an extra blade of grass. 
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words, 
And the bounty of birds, 
And the immortal olive tree. 
I walked this land before the swords 
Turned its living body into a laden table. 

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother 
When the sky weeps for her mother. 
And I...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ee

In these doom-laden days

You are steady as a pilot nursing tired ships homeward

Through churning seas

Where grey gulls scream

Forlornly and for ever.

I am the red-neck,

Bear-headed blaster

Shifting sheer rock

To rape the ore of poetry’s plunder

Or bulldozing trees to glean mines of silver

While you sail serenely onward 

Ever the diplomat’s daughter

Toujours de la politesse.

IV

Daisy Abey

Daisy, dearest of all, safest

And kindest, watcher and warner...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...e distant steep,--
A lichen clinging to the rock:
There sails a fleet upon the deep,--
A wandering flock
Of snow-winged gulls: and yonder, in the plain,
A marble palace shines,--a grain
Of mica glittering in the rain.
Beneath thy feet the clouds are rolled
By voiceless winds: and far between
The rolling clouds new shores and peaks are seen,
In shimmering robes of green and gold,
And faint aerial hue
That silent fades into the silent blue.
Thou, from thy mountain-hold,...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
 Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room,
 Who tolls his birthday bell,
Toils towards the ambush of his wounds;
 Herons, steeple stemmed, bless.

 In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly
 In the claw track...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...nied; 
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, 
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. 

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, 
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife; 
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, 
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ashing, pashing, rippling motion
Between broad meadows to an ocean
Wide as a day and blue as a flower,
Where every hour
Gulls dipped, and scattered, and squawked, and 
squealed,
And over the marshes the Angelus pealed,
And the prows of the fishing-boats were spattered
With spray.
And away a couple of frigates were starting
To race to Java with all sails set,
Topgallants, and royals, and stunsails, and jibs,
And wide moonsails; and the shining rails
Were polished so bright...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,—we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.


III.

One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand,
With wave upon slowly shattering wave,
Turned to the city ...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghost...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...r> Beach bums in rags slept on the lawns above the sand. Others sat on
stone benches sharing a lone bottle. The gulls whirled about, mindless yet distracted. Old
ladies in their 70's and 80's sat on the benches and discussed selling real estate left
behind by husbands long ago killed by the pace and stupidity of survival. For it all,
there was peace in the air and we walked about and stretched on the lawns and didn't say
much. It simply felt good being tog...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...turing Lee Van Cleef.


4 The Flight, Passing 
 Blanchisseuse.

Dusk. The Flight passing Blanchisseuse.
Gulls wheel like from a gun again,
and foam gone amber that was white,
lighthouse and star start making friends,
down every beach the long day ends,
and there, on that last stretch of sand,
on a beach bare of all but light,
dark hands start pulling in the seine
of the dark sea, deep, deep inland.


5 Shabine Encounters the
 Middle Passage

Man, I brisk i...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...me out
O Lord Thou pluckest 
burning
IV. DEATH BY WATER
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
 A
current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
 Gentile
or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
Af...Read more of this...

by Carver, Raymond
...ks
where snow had drifted. Kept going
until I reached the bluff.
Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
the gulls wheeling over the white beach
far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
began to wander. I had to will
myself to see what I was seeing
and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what
mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
it crowded out t...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles with your hands.

We wished our two souls 
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end, 
the water was too cold for us....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Gulls poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things