Famous Lake Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lake poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lake poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lake poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ks forth, and in the radiance of whose beams,
The humble shepherd, and the river-swain
By Jordan stream, or Galilea's lake,
Can see each truth and paradox explain'd,
Which not each wise philosopher of Greece,
Could tell, nor sage of India, nor the sons
Of Zoroaster, in deep secrets skill'd.
Such light on Canaan shone but not confin'd
With partial ray to Judah's favour'd land,
Each vale and region to the utmost bound
Of habitable earth, distant or nigh
Soon finds ...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...id
The adventure unattended. Last October
He took me with him into the Maine woods,
Where, by the shore of a primeval lake,
With woods all round it, and a voyage away
From anything wearing clothes, he had reared somehow
A lodge, or camp, with a stone chimney in it,
And a wide fireplace to make men forget
Their sins who sat before it in the evening,
Hearing the wind outside among the trees
And the black water washing on the shore.
I never knew the meaning of October
U...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...errible surge of waves, all mixed together
with heated gore, the whelming of dreary death.
Fated to death he dyed the lake, deprived of joys,
after he had given up his life in his swampy lair,
his heathen soul. There hell took him. (ll. 837-52)
They turned home from there, the old retainers
likewise many young ones too, from their happy path,
proud they rode their horses back from the mere,
warriors on their chargers. There was Beowulf’s glory
announced—many kept o...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ring on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of mariju...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...o bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied
strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine.
(It had gone into the lake twice.)
Of such moments is happiness made.
Forgive us, Father, for we know not.
Once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom,
the pleasuring seas,
the country of comfort,
spanked into the oxygens of death,
Good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffee toast
and we Americans take juice,
a ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...astes that held him. So mine eyes
Surveyed that fear, the while my wearied frame
Rested, and ever my heart's tossed lake became
More quiet.
Then from that pass released, which yet
With living feet had no man left, I set
My forward steps aslant the steep, that so,
My right foot still the lower, I climbed.
Below
No more I gazed. Around, a slope of sand
Was sterile of all growth on either hand,
Or moving life, a spotted pard except,
That yawning rose, an...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...Fair maid! believe me, love is like a lake,
Whose crystal depths reflect thy brow of snow;
The roses on thy cheek that come and go,
When in thy azure eyes the smiles awake,
No passing winds the liquid mirror wake,
The cool refreshing airs so softly blow.
But hidden currents in the depths below
The angry surface in an instant shake.
Gaze then in safety from the emerald shore;
Nor lau...Read more of this...
by
Irisarri, Hermogénes
...steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe!
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our porper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat; descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the Deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? Th' ascent is easy, then;
Th' event is feared! Should we again pr...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...eless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling still advance his praise.
His praise, ye Winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and, wave your tops, ye Pi...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...and wind around its base;
I see the Humboldt range—I thread the valley and cross the river,
I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe—I see forests of majestic pines,
Or, crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters
and
meadows;
Marking through these, and after all, in duplicate slender lines,
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
The road between Europe and Asia.
(Ah Genoes...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and singing;
I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-west lakes;
I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and grass with the
showers
of
their terrible clouds;
I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black
venerable
vast mother, the Nile;
I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Kanada;
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, an...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ll up with snow.
My little horse must think it *****
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...forgotten--
Bury it! Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.
For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...o shore,
The gallant stag swam stoutly o'er.
Few were the stragglers, following far,
That reached the lake of Vennachar;
And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
The headmost horseman rode alone.
VII.
Alone, but with unbated zeal,
That horseman plied the scourge and steel;
For jaded now, and spent with toil,
Embossed with foam, and dark with soil,
While every gasp with sobs he drew,
The laboring stag straine...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam:
A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past:
And there through twenty posts of telegraph
They flashed a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stat...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...m of the stream
That whispered with delight to be their pillow.--
"As one enamoured is upborne in dream
O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
"Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
The dancing foam, partly to glide along
The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
"Or the slant morning beams that fell among
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
"Of leaves & winds & waves & bird...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...t, upraised his keys,
And at the fifth line knock'd the poet down;
Who fell like Phaeton, but more at ease,
Into his lake, for there he did not drown;
A different web being by the Destinies
Woven for the Laureate's final wreath, whene'er
Reform shall happen either here or there.
CV
He first sank to the bottom - like his works,
But soon rose to the surface — like himself;
For all corrupted things are bouy'd like corks,(4)
By their own rottenness, light as an elf, ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...in could never bend or whirlblast shake,
With the antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the austral lake--
There she would build herself a windless haven
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by:--
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably;
And around which the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted t...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...repeats
The last poems that you wrote for me?
x x x
Instead of wisdom -- experience, bare,
That does not slake thirst, is not wet.
Youth's gone -- like a Sunday prayer..
Is it mine to forget?
On how many desert roads have searched I
With him who wasn't dear for me,
How many bows gave in church I
For him, who had well loved me.
I've become more oblivious than inviting,
Quietly years swim.
Lips unkissed, eyes unsmiling --
Nothing will give me back hi...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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