Famous Gunwale Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Amandas Painting

...ted in a shield,
coming home in it up a shadowy river.
It is a small metal boat lined in eggshell
and my hands grip the gunwale rims. I'm
a composite bow, tensioning the whole boat,
steering it with my gaze. No oars, no engine,
no sails. I'm propelling the little craft with speech.
The faded rings around the loose bulk shirt
are of five lines each, a musical lineation
and the shirt is apple-red, soaking in salt birth-sheen
more liquid than the river. My cap is a teal mask
pus...Read more of this...
by Murray, Les


American Feuillage

...ts, under shelter of high
 banks, 
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the
 gunwale,
 smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal
 Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the
 cypress
 tree,
 and the juniper tree; 
—Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion
 returning
 home at
 evening—the musket-muzzle...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

On a Forenoon of Spring

...f polished steel 
Spread out amidst the landmarks of the bay. 

I stoop in sunshine to our circling net 
From the black gunwale; tend these milky kine 
Up their rough path; sit by yon cottage-door 
Plying the diligent thread; take wings and soar-- 
O hark how with the season's laureate 
Joy culminates in song! If such a song were mine!...Read more of this...
by Allingham, William

Pickthorn Manor

...tayed,
Then was extinguished, and Sir Everard made
One leap, and landed just a fraction short.

LXI
His weight upon the gunwale tipped the boat To 
straining balance. Everard lurched and seized
His wife and held her smothered to his coat. "Everard, loose 
me, we shall drown --" and squeezed
Against him, she beat with her hands. He gasped "Never, 
by God!" The slidden boat gave way
And the black foamy water split -- and met. Bubbled 
up through the spray
A wailing rose and in ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Poem of Joys

...-faced
 crew: 
Or, another time, trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, 
My left foot is on the gunwale—my right arm throws the coils of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions. 

7
O boating on the rivers! 
The voyage down the Niagara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
 steamers, 
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
 raftsmen
 with long-reaching sweep...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


The Writer

...story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
>From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

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