Famous Neptune Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Mercy

by Philip Levine
 The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island 
Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." 
She remembers trying to eat a banana 
without first peeling it and seeing her first orange
in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman 
who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her 
with a red bandana and taught her the...Read more of this...

The Character Of Holland

by Andrew Marvell
 Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
As but th'Off-scouring of the Brittish Sand;
And so much Earth as was contributed
By English Pilots when they heav'd the Lead;
Or what by th' Oceans slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrackt Cockle and the Muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the Sea
Fell to the Dutch by just Propriety.
Glad then, as Miners that have found the Oar,
They with...Read more of this...

To Homer

by John Keats
 Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
 Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
 To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind;--but then the veil was rent,
 For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
 And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the...Read more of this...

My Last Duchess

by Robert Browning
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.  I call 
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands 
Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 
Will't please you sit and look at her?  I said 
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read 
Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 
The depth and passion...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5

by Alexander Pope
 She said: the pitying audience melt in tears, 
But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan;
Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.
"Say, why are beauties prais'd...Read more of this...

Venus Runaway

by Ben Jonson
 Beauties, have ye seen this toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say?
He is Venus' runaway.

She that will but now discover
Where the winged wag doth hover,
Shall to-night receive a kiss,
How or where herself would wish:
But who brings him to his mother,
Shall have that kiss, and another.

He hath marks about...Read more of this...

The Ballad of That P.N

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The shades of night had fallen at last, 
When through the house a shadow passed, 
That once had been the Genial Dan, 
But now become a desperate man, 
At question time he waited near, 
And on the Premier's startled ear 
A voice fell like half a brick -- 
"Did ye, or did ye not, pay Crick 
Did ye?" 
By...Read more of this...

Ode To Neptune

by Phillis Wheatley
 On Mrs. W-----'s Voyage to England.

I.
WHILE raging tempests shake the shore,
While AElus' thunders round us roar,
And sweep impetuous o'er the plain
Be still, O tyrant of the main;
Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray,
While my Susanna skims the wat'ry way.

II.
The Pow'r propitious hears the lay,
The blue-ey'd daughters of the sea
With sweeter cadence glide along,
And Thames responsive joins the song.
Pleas'd with...Read more of this...

At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge Part Latin Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended The English Thus Began

by John Milton
 Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,
Driving dum silence from the portal dore,
Where he had mutely sate two years before:
Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that thence can...Read more of this...

The Invincible Armada

by Friedrich von Schiller
 She comes, she comes--the burden of the deeps!
Beneath her wails the universal sea!
With clanking chains and a new god, she sweeps,
And with a thousand thunders, unto thee!
The ocean-castles and the floating hosts--
Ne'er on their like looked the wild water!--Well
May man the monster name "Invincible."
O'er shuddering waves she gathers to thy coasts!
The horror that she spreads can claim
Just title to...Read more of this...

Feast Of Victory

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Priam's castle-walls had sunk,
Troy in dust and ashes lay,
And each Greek, with triumph drunk,
Richly laden with his prey,
Sat upon his ship's high prow,
On the Hellespontic strand,
Starting on his journey now,
Bound for Greece, his own fair land.
Raise the glad exulting shout!
Toward the land that gave them birth
Turn they now the ships about,
As they seek their native earth.

And in rows, all...Read more of this...

Noctambule

by Robert William Service
 Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Favored

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Ah! happy he, upon whose birth each god
Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright
Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod
Of eloquent Hermes kindles--to whose eyes,
Scarce wakened yet, Apollo steals in light,
While on imperial brows Jove sets the seal of might!
Godlike the lot ordained for him to share,
He wins the garland ere he runs the race;
He learns life's...Read more of this...

The Aristocrat

by G K Chesterton
 The Devil is a gentleman and askes you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids...Read more of this...

Catullus: XXXI

by Thomas Hardy
 (After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) 

Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands 
That Neptune strokes in lake and sea, 
With what high joy from stranger lands 
Doth thy old friend set foot on thee! 
Yea, barely seems it true to me 
That no Bithynia holds me now, 
But calmly and assuringly 
Around me stretchest homely Thou. 

Is there a scene...Read more of this...

Canto I

by Ezra Pound
 And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we...Read more of this...

I In My Intricate Image

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She...Read more of this...

A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 VERSE I 

In a famed town of Caledonia's land, 
A prosperous port contiguous to the strand, 
A monarch feasted in right royal state; 
But care still dogs the pleasures of the Great,
And well his faithful servants could surmise 
From his distracted looks and broken sighs 
That though the purple bowl was circling free,
His mind was prey to black perplexity....Read more of this...

Wanderers

by Walter de la Mare
 Wide are the meadows of night, 
And daisies are shinng there, 
Tossing their lovely dews, 
Lustrous and fair; 

And through these sweet fields go, 
Wanderers amid the stars -- 
Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, 
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. 

'Tired in their silver, they move, 
And circling, whisper and say, 
Fair are the blossoming meads of delight 
Through which we stray....Read more of this...

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