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Famous Mediterranean Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wright, James
...
And of lettuce leaves opening in Tunisia.

I turn, and somehow
Impossibly hovering in the air over everything,
The Mediterranean, nearer to the moon
Than this mountain is, Shines. A voice clearly
Tells me to snap out of it. Galway
Mutters out of the house and up the stone stairs
To start the motor. The moon and the stars
Suddenly flicker out, and the whole mountain
Appears, pale as a shell.

Look, the sea has not fallen and broken
Our heads. How can I...Read more of this...



by Jeffers, Robinson
...The world has many seas, Mediterranean, Atlantic, but 
 here is the shore of the one ocean.
And here the heavy future hangs like a cloud; the 
 enormous scene; the enormous games preparing
Weigh on the water and strain the rock; the stage is 
 here, the play is conceived; the players are 
 not found.

I saw on the Sierras, up the Kaweah valley above the 
 Moro rock, the moun...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea, 
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee 
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me. 

And multimarbled Genova the Proud, 
Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed, 
I first beheld thee clad--not as the Beauty but the Dowd. 

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit 
On houseback...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...at sparkly
 Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
 out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
 Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
 Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeez...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...hat the Root of the Wind is Water --
It would not sound so deep
Were it a Firmamental Product --
Airs no Oceans keep --
Mediterranean intonations --
To a Current's Ear --
There is a maritime conviction
In the Atmosphere --...Read more of this...



by McGonagall, William Topaz
...Near by the silent waters of the Mediterranean,
And at the door of an old hut stood a coloured man,
Whose dress was oriental in style and poor with wear,
While adown his furrowed cheeks ran many a tear. 

And the poor coloured man seemed very discontent,
And his grief overcame him at this moment;
And he wrung his hands in agony wild,
And he cried, "Oh! help me, great God, to find my chi...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...LITTLE EASE


LONG time I lay in little ease
Where, placed by the Turanian,
Marseilles, the many-masted, sees
The blue Mediterranean.

Now songful in the hour of sport,
Now riotous for wages,
She camps around her ancient port,
As ancient of the ages.

Algerian airs through all the place
Unconquerably sally;
Incomparable women pace
The shadows of the alley.

And high o'er dark and graving yard
And where the sky is paler,
The golden virgin of the guard
Shines, beck...Read more of this...

by Wright, James
...ter is hanging on. Bitter and skillful in his
hopelessness, he stays alive in every shady place, starving along the
Mediterranean: angry to see the glittering sea-pale boulder alive
with lizards green as Judas leaves. Winter is hanging on. He still
believes. He tries to catch a lizard by the shoulder. One olive tree
below Grottaglie welcomes the winter into noontime shade, and
talks as softly as Pythagoras. Be still, be patient, I can hear him say,
cra...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...sphere 
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst:¡ªO hear! 

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30 
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, 
Beside a pumice isle in Bai?'s bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 35 
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou 
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 
Cleave the...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ulf of Guinea,
The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay of Biscay, 
The clear-sunn’d Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands, 
The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America, 
The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland. 

I behold the mariners of the world;
Some are in storms—some in the night, with the watch on the look-out; 
Some drifting helplessly—some with contagious diseases. 

I behold the sail and steamships of ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...forgets he is well off; 
The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage home, and the native of
 the
 Mediterranean voyages home, 
To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill’d ships, 
The Swiss foots it toward his hills—the Prussian goes his way, the Hungarian his way,
 and
 the
 Pole his way,
The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return. 

17
The homeward bound, and the outward bound, 
The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyé, the on...Read more of this...

by Belloc, Hilaire
...olish face!
His skin is of a dirty yellow.
He is a most unpleasant fellow.


III

The most degraded of them all
Mediterranean we call.
His hair is crisp, and even curls,
And he is saucy with the girls....Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific--
Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...n Africa;
but "Palmyrie" has been suggested as the correct reading. The
Great Sea, or the Greek sea, is the Eastern Mediterranean.
Tramissene, or Tremessen, is enumerated by Froissart among
the Moorish kingdoms in Africa. Palatie, or Palathia, in
Anatolia, was a fief held by the Christian knights after the
Turkish conquests -- the holders paying tribute to the infidel.
Our knight had fought with one of those lords against a heathen
neighbour.

9. Ilke:...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...capsized bottom uppermost,
And, alas, lies buried in the sea totally lost. 

The "Victoria" was the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet,
And was struck by the "Camperdown" when too close they did meet,
While practising the naval and useful art of war,
How to wheel and discharge their shot at the enemy afar. 

Oh, Heaven ! Methinks I see some men lying in their beds,
And some skylarking, no doubt, and not a soul dreads
The coming avalanche that was to seal their doom,
...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...--

This -- too -- the Showman rubbed away --
And when I looked again --
Nor Farm -- nor Opal Herd -- was there --
Nor Mediterranean --...Read more of this...

by Francis, Robert
...orably to the hills of Rome.
His arrowheads could hold their own with are Etruscan.

And Walden clearly was his Mediterranean
whose infinite colors were his picture gallery.
How far his little boat transported him-how far.

He coughed discreetly and we likewise coughed;
we waited and we heard him clear his throat.

How to be perfect prisoners of the past
this was the thing but now he too is past.

Shall we go sit beside the Mississippi
and watch the ri...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...and sea.

One dead flat sapphire, void of wrath or glee,
Through bay on bay shone blind from bank to bank
The weary Mediterranean, drear to see.

More deep, more living, shone her eyes that drank
The breathless light and shed again on me,
Till pale before their splendour waned and shrank
The sky and sea.

II.--GENOA

Again the same strange might of eyes, that saw
In heaven and earth nought fairer, overcame
My sight with rapture of reiterate awe,
Again the same...Read more of this...

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