Famous Marshes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Betrothed

by Rudyard Kipling
 "You must choose between me and your cigar."
 -- BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885.


Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas -- we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box --...Read more of this...

The White Mans Foot

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All...Read more of this...

To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 You know there is not much 
that I desire, a few chrysanthemums 
half lying on the grass, yellow 
and brown and white, the 
talk of a few people, the trees, 
an expanse of dried leaves perhaps 
with ditches among them. 
But there comes 
between me and these things 
a letter 
or even a look—well placed, 
you understand, 
so that...Read more of this...

The Progress of Spring

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain...Read more of this...

The peter-bird

by Eugene Field
 Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is...Read more of this...

Curriculum Vitae

by Anthony Hecht
 1992

1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.

2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into 
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of 
course I do not remember this.

3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The 
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.

4) A cornucopia filled...Read more of this...

Hymn

by Sidney Godolphin
 I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
 over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
 where one wants to stop and look
way past all the...Read more of this...

Lament For Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

by Federico García Lorca
 1. Cogida and death 

At five in the afternoon. 
It was exactly five in the afternoon. 
A boy brought the white sheet 
at five in the afternoon. 
A frail of lime ready prepared 
at five in the afternoon. 
The rest was death, and death alone. 

The wind carried away the cottonwool 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the oxide...Read more of this...

Haze

by Carl Sandburg
 KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.

Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.

Other faces rise on the...Read more of this...

He Lurks Among the Reeds

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   He lurks among the reeds, beside the marsh,
     Red oleanders twisted in His hair,
   His eyes are haggard and His lips are harsh,
     Upon His breast the bones show gaunt and bare.

   The green and stagnant waters lick His feet,
     And...Read more of this...

new age

by Rg Gregory
 (i)
how new the world is
trying to find
nerve in an old rind

(ii)
the bread is crumbled
for birds to swallow
rolled into droppings
flowers from the hair
of noseless statues
tyrants of parks
where men have cowered
too long and mistaken
unmanned by he dark

(iii)
when we awaken
(how have we fallen)
machines are broken
wires lie strangled
by the messages they nursed
lathes are swinging
from trees in derision
pipes burst and scalded
houses contorted
(what went on...Read more of this...

from Proverbs of Hell

by Rg Gregory
 (a) radical

ban all fires
and places where people congregate
to create comfort
put an end to sleep
good cooking
and the delectation of wine
tear lovers apart
piss on the sun and moon
degut all heavenly harmony
strike out across the bitter ice
and the poisonous marshes

make (if you dare) a better world

(b) expect poison from standing water
  (iii)
lake erie
why not as a joke one night
pick up your...Read more of this...

Joy

by Emile Verhaeren
O splendid, spacious day, irradiate
With flaming dawns, when earth shows yet more fair
Her ardent beauty, proud, without alloy;
And wakening life breathes out her perfume rare
So potently, that, all intoxicate,
Our ravished being rushes upon joy!


Be thanked, mine eyes, that now
Ye still shine clear beneath my furrowed brow
To see afar, the light vibrating there;
And you my hands, that in the sun yet...Read more of this...

The lovely garden blossoming with flames

by Emile Verhaeren
The lovely garden blossoming with flames that seemed to us the double or the mirror of the bright garden we carried in our hearts is crystallized in frost and gold this evening.
A great white silence has descended and sits yonder on the marble horizons, towards which march the trees in files, with their blue, immense and regular shadow beside them.
No...Read more of this...

Eddis Service

by Rudyard Kipling
 Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
 In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
 For such as cared to attend.

But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,
 And the night was stormy as well.
Nobody came to service,
 Though Eddi rang the bell.

"'Wicked weather for walking,"
 Said Eddi of Manhood End.
"But I must go on with the service
 For such as care...Read more of this...

The Wilderness

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes, 
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland 
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. 
There is nothing left but ashes...Read more of this...

Three Odes To My Friend

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THESE are the most singular of all the Poems 
of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to 
leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, 
addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, 
and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite 
young. Despite, however,...Read more of this...

The Peace-Pipe

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.
From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O'er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger...Read more of this...

The Moose

by Elizabeth Bishop
 From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats 
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich...Read more of this...

From "The Marshes Of The Glynn"

by Sidney Lanier
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on...Read more of this...

Goblin Revel

by Siegfried Sassoon
IN gold and grey with fleering looks of sin 
I watch them come; by two by three by four 
Advancing slow with loutings they begin
Their woven measure widening from the door;
While music-men behind are straddling in 5
With flutes to brisk their feet across the floor ¡ª
And jangled dulcimers and fiddles thin
That taunt the twirling antic through once more.

They pause and...Read more of this...

The Vagabonds

by Bliss Carman
 We are the vagabonds of time, 
And rove the yellow autumn days, 
When all the roads are gray with rime 
And all the valleys blue with haze. 
We came unlooked for as the wind 
Trooping across the April hills, 
When the brown waking earth had dreams 
Of summer in the Wander Kills. 
How far afield we joyed to fare,...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Fishing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, 
On the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
With his fishing-line of cedar, 
Of the twisted bark of cedar, 
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, 
In his birch canoe exulting 
All alone went Hiawatha.
Through the clear, transparent water 
He could see the fishes swimming 
Far down in the depths below him; 
See the yellow...Read more of this...

The Iron Wedding Rings

by Henry Lawson
 In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal, 
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel; 
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old, 
And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold. 

In the days of black oppression, when the best abandoned hope,...Read more of this...

Now Close the Windows

by Robert Frost
 Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
I will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred....Read more of this...

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