Famous Moored Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Rhyme of the Three Captains

by Rudyard Kipling
 This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious
Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact.


 . . . At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex...Read more of this...

The Wood

by Charlotte Bronte
 BUT two miles more, and then we rest ! 
Well, there is still an hour of day, 
And long the brightness of the West 
Will light us on our devious way; 
Sit then, awhile, here in this wood­ 
So total is the solitude, 
We safely may delay. 

These massive roots afford a seat, 
Which seems for weary travellers made....Read more of this...

The Sailor

by Rabindranath Tagore
 The boat of the boatman Madhu is moored at the wharf of Rajgunj.
It is uselessly laden with jute, and has been lying there idle
for ever so long.
If he would only lend me his boat, I should man her with a
hundred oars, and hoist sails, five or six or seven.
I should never steer her to stupid markets.
I should sail the...Read more of this...

From Vashti

by Lascelles Abercrombie
 WHAT thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? 
Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all 
The world, but an awning scaffolded amid 
The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge 
This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? 
The East and West kneel down to thee, the North 
And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear 
The load of...Read more of this...

Symphony In Yellow

by Oscar Wilde
 An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a...Read more of this...

Now Returned Home

by Robinson Jeffers
 Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides
We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain
Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the
 year; I noticed most an old shepherd,
Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed
 girl 
Who cherished what seemed a doll, wrapping it...Read more of this...

The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence

by W S Merwin
 Moored to the same ring:
The hour, the darkness and I,
Our compasses hooded like falcons.

Now the memory of you comes aching in
With a wash of broken bits which never left port
In which once we planned voyages,
They come knocking like hearts asking:
What departures on this tide?

Breath of land, warm breath,
You tighten the cold around the navel,
Though all shores but the first...Read more of this...

A Hill

by Anthony Hecht
 In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur,
I had a vision once - though you understand
It was nothing at all like Dante's, or the visions of saints,
And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends,
Picking my way through a warm sunlit piazza
In the early morning. A clear fretwork of shadows
From huge umbrellas littered the pavement...Read more of this...

In the Matter of One Compass

by Rudyard Kipling
 When, foot to wheel and back to wind,
The helmsman dare not look behind,
But hears beyond his compass-light,
The blind bow thunder through the night,
And, like a harpstring ere it snaps,
The rigging sing beneath the caps;
 Above the shriek of storm in sail
 Or rattle of the blocks blown free,
 Set for the peace beyond the gale,
 This song the Needle...Read more of this...

The Bell Buoy

by Rudyard Kipling
 1896
They christened my brother of old--
 And a saintly name he bears--
They gave him his place to hold
 At the head of the belfry-stairs,
 Where the minister-towers stand
And the breeding kestrels cry.
 Would I change with my brother a league inland?
(Shoal! 'Ware shoal!) Not I!

In the flush of the hot June prime,
 O'ersleek flood-tides afire,
I hear him hurry the...Read more of this...

The Tree of Laughing Bells

by Vachel Lindsay
 [A Poem for Aviators]


How the Wings Were Made

From many morning-glories 
That in an hour will fade, 
From many pansy buds 
Gathered in the shade, 
From lily of the valley 
And dandelion buds, 
From fiery poppy-buds 
Are the Wings of the Morning made. 


The Indian Girl Who Made Them

These, the Wings of the Morning, 
An Indian Maiden wove, 
Intertwining subtilely...Read more of this...

My Thoughts Of Ye

by Victor Hugo
 ("À quoi je songe?") 
 
 {XXIII., July, 1836.} 


 What do I dream of? Far from the low roof, 
 Where now ye are, children, I dream of you; 
 Of your young heads that are the hope and crown 
 Of my full summer, ripening to its fall. 
 Branches whose shadow grows along my wall, 
...Read more of this...

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods, against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches tost;

And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and water o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of...Read more of this...

Jueju, No. 3 of 4 (Two Golden Orioles Sing in the Green Willows)

by Du Fu
 Two (measure word) golden orioles sing green willow One row white egrets on blue sky Window contain west mountain thousand autumn snow Door moor east Wu ten thousand li boat Two golden orioles sing in the green willows, A row of white egrets against the blue sky. The window frames the western hills' snow of...Read more of this...

The Harvest

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 Sun on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and lightness
Leaping along the world,
Sun, like a gold sword
Plucked from the scabbard,
Striking the wheat-fields,
Splendid and lusty,
Close-standing, full-headed,
Toppling with plenty;
Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim
Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,
A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored...Read more of this...

Block City

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, 
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbor as well where my vessels...Read more of this...

A Florida Ghost

by Sidney Lanier
 Down mildest shores of milk-white sand,
By cape and fair Floridian bay,
Twixt billowy pines -- a surf asleep on land --
And the great Gulf at play,

Past far-off palms that filmed to nought,
Or in and out the cunning keys
That laced the land like fragile patterns wrought
To edge old broideries,

The sail sighed on all day for joy,
The prow each pouting wave did...Read more of this...

The Quadroon Girl

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 The Slaver in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail;
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.

Under the shore his boat was tied,
And all her listless crew
Watched the gray alligator slide
Into the still bayou.

Odors of orange-flowers, and spice,
Reached them from time to time,
Like airs that breathe from Paradise
Upon a world of crime.

The Planter, under his roof of...Read more of this...

In Harbour

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I.

Goodnight and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us
As mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by;
To the waters of gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us
Goodnight and goodbye.

A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh;
But were we not fools and blind, by day to devote us
As thralls to the darkness, unseen of...Read more of this...

In The Virgins

by Derek Walcott
 You can't put in the ground swell of the organ
from the Christiansted, St.Croix, Anglican Church
behind the paratrooper's voice: "Turned cop
after Vietnam. I made thirty jumps."
Bells punish the dead street and pigeons lurch
from the stone belfry, opening their chutes,
circling until the rings of ringing stop.
"Salud!" The paratrooper's glass is raised.
The congregation rises to its feet
like a patrol, with scuffling shoes...Read more of this...

The Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods, against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches tost;

And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and water o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of...Read more of this...

The Wood

by Charlotte Bronte
 But two miles more, and then we rest ! 
Well, there is still an hour of day, 
And long the brightness of the West 
Will light us on our devious way; 
Sit then, awhile, here in this wood­ 
So total is the solitude, 
We safely may delay. 

These massive roots afford a seat, 
Which seems for weary travellers made....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Moored poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace