Famous Hurricane Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Wreck of the Barque Wm. Paterson of Liverpool

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye landsmen all attend my verse, and I'll tell to ye a tale
Concerning the barque "Wm. Paterson" that was lost in a tempestuous gale;
She was on a voyage from Bangkok to the Clyde with a cargo of Teakwood,
And the crew numbered Fifteen in all of seamen firm and good. 

'Twas on the 11th of March, when a violent gale...Read more of this...

The Skeleton in Armor

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 
Comest to daunt me! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5 
But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 
Why dost thou haunt me?" 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 
As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December; 
And,...Read more of this...

Account of a Visit From ST. Nicholas

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 "Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,
And mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had...Read more of this...

Conquistador

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 I sing of the decline of Henry Clay 
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size. 
Although a small man in a little way, 
He had in him some seed of enterprise. 

Each day he caught the seven-thirty train 
To work, watered his garden after tea, 
Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A 
nd was remarkably like...Read more of this...

The Cloud

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains...Read more of this...

The Oceans Song

by Victor Hugo
 We walked amongst the ruins famed in story 
Of Rozel-Tower, 
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory 
And heave in power. 

O Ocean vast! We heard thy song with wonder, 
Whilst waves marked time. 
"Appear, O Truth!" thou sang'st with tone of thunder, 
"And shine sublime! 

"The world's enslaved and hunted down by beagles, 
To despots sold. 
Souls...Read more of this...

The Disquieting Muses

by Sylvia Plath
 Mother, mother, what ill-bred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?

Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always
Got baked into...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Calliope

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 By the far Samoan shore, 
Where the league-long rollers pour 
All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay, 
Riding lightly at their ease, 
In the calm of tropic seas, 
The three great nations' warships at their anchors proudly lay. 
Riding lightly, head to wind, 
With the coral reefs behind, 
Three German and three Yankee ships were mirrored...Read more of this...

Boadicea

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. 

`They that scorn...Read more of this...

The Wind

by Emile Verhaeren
Crossing the infinite length of the moorland,
Here comes the wind,
The wind with his trumpet that Heralds November;
Endless and infinite, crossing the downs,
Here comes the wind
That teareth himself and doth fiercely dismember;
Which heavy breaths turbulent smiting the towns,
The savage wind comes, the fierce wind of November!


Each bucket of iron at the wells of the farmyards,
Each bucket and pulley, it creaks and...Read more of this...

The Strange Lady

by William Cullen Bryant
 The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by, 
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool dear sky; 
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound 
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground. 

A lovely woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight; 
Her...Read more of this...

Between Hurricanes

by Belinda Subraman
 As we slide into the 3rd world we have created,
running from hurricanes,
with our SS# indelibly inked on our arms
storms swell and swallow our control.

I am flooded with life review,
the beliefs of my youth.
I reach for my first Bible
which has survived every move.
I am mystified by Revelation’s
hallucinations again.

I would like to clutch an answer close,
bury myself in a father’s love
but...Read more of this...

A Sunset

by Victor Hugo
 I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, 
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, 
In numerous leafage bosomed close; 
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, 
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere 
On cloudy archipelagos. 

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,...Read more of this...

Night on the Convoy

by Siegfried Sassoon
 (ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)


Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck 
A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black, 
The lean Destroyers, level with our track, 
Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way 
Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
One sentry by the davits, in the gloom 
Stands mute: the boat heaves onward through the night. 
Shrouded is...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Barque Lynton

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A sad tale of the sea, I will unfold,
About Mrs Lingard, that Heroine bold;
Who struggled hard in the midst of the hurricane wild,
To save herself from being drowned, and her darling child. 

'Twas on the 8th of September, the Barque "Lynton" sailed for Aspinwall,
And the crew on board, numbered thirteen in all;
And the weather at the time, was really...Read more of this...

Independence

by Aleister Crowley
 Come to my arms --- is it eve? is it morn? 
Is Apollo awake? Is Diana reborn? 
Are the streams in full song? Do the woods whisper hush 
Is it the nightingale? Is it the thrush? 
Is it the smile of the autumn, the blush 
Of the spring? Is the world full of peace or alarms? 
Come to my...Read more of this...

Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears

by Robert Francis
 The first speaker said
Fear fire. Fear furnaces
Incinerators, the city dump
The faint scratch of a match. 

The second speaker said
Fear water. Fear drenching rain
Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp
Day and the flush toilet. 

The third speaker said
Fear wind. And it needn't be
A hurricane. Drafts, open
Windows, electric fans. 

The fourth speaker said
Fear knives. Fear any sharp
Thing, machine, shears
Scissors, lawnmowers. 

The fifth speaker...Read more of this...

Parables And Riddles

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I.

A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.

Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.

It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be...Read more of this...

The Sea And the Hills

by Rudyard Kipling
 1902
Who hath desired the Sea? -- the sight of salt wind-hounded --
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber win hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing --
Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing --
His Sea in no showing the same his Sea and...Read more of this...

A Visit From St. Nicholas

by Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled...Read more of this...

The Palace of Humbug

by Lewis Carroll
 Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor 

Number 1 

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls. 

Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze. 

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere. 

One showed a vain...Read more of this...

I meant to find Her when I came --

by Emily Dickinson
 I meant to find Her when I came --
Death -- had the same design --
But the Success -- was His -- it seems --
And the Surrender -- Mine --

I meant to tell Her how I longed
For just this single time --
But Death had told Her so the first --
And she had past, with Him --

To wander -- now --...Read more of this...

The Heart has narrow Banks

by Emily Dickinson
 The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty -- unremitting Bass
And Blue Monotony

Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
Its insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns

That Calm is but a Wall
Of unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning -- dissolves....Read more of this...

The Snow

by Emile Verhaeren
Uninterruptedly falls the snow,
Like meagre, long wool-strands, scant and slow,
O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate.
Cold with lovelessness, warm with hate.


Infinite, infinite falls the snow.
Like a moment's time.
Monotonously, in a moment's time;
On the houses it falls and drops, the snow.
Monotonous, whitening them o'er with rime;
It falls on the sheds and their palings below.
And myriad-wise, it falls and lies
In ridgèd waves
In the...Read more of this...

Jubal and Tubal Cain

by Rudyard Kipling
 Canadian
Jubal sang of the Wrath of God
 And the curse of thistle and thorn--
But Tubal got him a pointed rod,
 And scrabbled the earth for corn.
 Old--old as that early mould,
 Young as the sprouting grain-- 
 Yearly green is the strife between
 Jubal and Tubal Cain!

Jubal sang of the new-found sea,
 And the love that its waves divide--
But...Read more of this...

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