Famous Nets Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Sands of Dee

by Charles Kingsley
 1 "O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
2 And call the cattle home,
3 And call the cattle home
4 Across the sands of Dee";
5 The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
6 And all alone went she.

7 The western tide crept up along the sand,
8 And o'er and o'er the sand,
9 And round and round the sand,
10 As...Read more of this...

Into The Twilight

by William Butler Yeats
 Out-Worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there...Read more of this...

Wynken Blynken and Nod

by Eugene Field
 Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we,"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang...Read more of this...

The Half-breed Girl

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,
Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
When she visits the rabbit snares,
An appearance floats in the crystal air
Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the...Read more of this...

On the Seashore

by Rabindranath Tagore
 On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. 
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances. 
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast...Read more of this...

Finistere

by Robert William Service
 Hurrah! I'm off to Finistere, to Finistere, to Finistere;
My satchel's swinging on my back, my staff is in my hand;
I've twenty louis in my purse, I know the sun and sea are there,
And so I'm starting out to-day to tramp the golden land.
I'll go alone and glorying, with on my lips a song of joy;
I'll leave behind the city...Read more of this...

A Pastoral Dialogue

by Anne Killigrew
 Amintor. STay gentle Nymph, nor so solic'tous be, 
To fly his sight that still would gaze on thee. 
With other Swaines I see thee oft converse, 
Content to speak, and hear what they rehearse: 
But I unhappy, when I e're draw nigh, 
Thou streight do'st leave both Place, and Company. 
If this thy Flight, from fear of Harm doth...Read more of this...

Down on the Shore

by William Allingham
 Down on the shore, on the sunny shore! 
Where the salt smell cheers the land;
Where the tide moves bright under boundless light, 
And the surge on the glittering strand; 
Where the children wade in the shallow pools, 
Or run from the froth in play; 
Where the swift little boats with milk-white wings 
Are crossing the sapphire bay, 
And the...Read more of this...

Different Emotions On The Same Spot

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE MAIDEN.

I'VE seen him before me!
What rapture steals o'er me!

Oh heavenly sight!
He's coming to meet me;
Perplex'd, I retreat me,

With shame take to flight.
My mind seems to wander!
Ye rocks and trees yonder,

Conceal ye my rapture.

Conceal my delight!

THE YOUTH.

'Tis here I must find her,
'Twas here she enshrined her,

Here vanish'd from sight.
She came, as to meet me,
Then fearing to greet me,

With shame...Read more of this...

cherries and birds

by Rg Gregory
 cherries are so vulnerable
blinking their way from green
to polished red in trees
guileless to stave off birds

a murmur does its rounds
and when the bright day comes
and ripeness throws its coyness
in the air a seething mesh

of wings and whetted beaks 
(knowing its cherry-right)
falls upon the fleshy fruit
and rips it to the stone

then birds become the foe
of people leaden in their legs
who...Read more of this...

Psalm XXXV: Now Plead My Cause Almighty God

by Isaac Watts
 Now plead my cause, Almighty God,
With all the sons of strife;
And fight against the men of blood,
Who fight against my life.

Draw out thy spear and stop their way,
Lift thine avenging rod;
But to my soul in mercv say,
"I am thy Savior God!"

They plant their snares to catch my feet,
And nets of mischief spread;
Plunge the destroyers in the pit
That their own...Read more of this...

Coromandel Fishers

by Sarojini Naidu
 Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light, 
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. 
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free, 
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!...Read more of this...

The Meditation Of The Old Fisherman

by William Butler Yeats
 You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,
Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;
In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;
My sorrow!...Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen: Chapter IV

by William Blake
 a

1. Los smitten with astonishment
Frightend at the hurtling bones

2. And at the surging sulphureous
Perturbed Immortal mad raging

3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre 
Round the furious limbs of Los

4. And Los formed nets & gins 
And threw the nets round about

5. He watch'd in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change 
With rivets of iron & brass;

6. And...Read more of this...

Purdah

by Sylvia Plath
 Jade --
Stone of the side,
The antagonized

Side of green Adam, I
Smile, cross-legged,
Enigmatical,

Shifting my clarities.
So valuable!
How the sun polishes this shoulder!

And should
The moon, my
Indefatigable cousin

Rise, with her cancerous pallors,
Dragging trees --
Little bushy polyps,

Little nets,
My visibilities hide.
I gleam like a mirror.

At this facet the bridegroom arrives
Lord of the mirrors!
It is himself he guides

In among these silk
Screens, these rustling appurtenances.
I breathe, and the...Read more of this...

Eastern River

by Peter Huchel
 Do not look for the stones
in water above the mud,
the boat is gone.
No longer with nets and baskets
the river is dotted.
The sun wick,
the marsh marigold flickered out in rain.

Only the willow still bears witness,
in its roots
the secrets of tramps lie hidden,
their paltry treasures,
a rusty fishhook,
a bottle full of sand,
a tine with no bottom,
in which to preserve
conversations long forgotten.

On the...Read more of this...

Vita Nuova

by Oscar Wilde
 I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray;
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets...Read more of this...

The Man From Athabaska

by Robert William Service
 Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas nothing but the thrumming
 Of a wood-pecker a-rapping on the hollow of a tree;
And she thought that I was fooling when I said it was the drumming
 Of the mustering of legions, and 'twas calling unto me;
 'Twas calling me to pull my freight and hop across the sea.

And...Read more of this...

Ave Imperatrix

by Oscar Wilde
 Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?

The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,

The spears of crimson-suited war,
The long white-crested waves of fight,
And all the deadly fires...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

Totem

by Sylvia Plath
 The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,
It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.

Its running is useless.
At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,

Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs,
Swaying slightly in their thick suits,

White towers of Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.

There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's...Read more of this...

Sisters

by Osip Mandelstam
 Sisters - Heaviness and Tenderness- you look the same.
Wasps and bees both suck the heavy rose.
Man dies, and the hot sand cools again.
Carried off on a black stretcher, yesterday’s sun goes.

Oh, honeycombs’ heaviness, nets’ tenderness,
it’s easier to lift a stone than to say your name!
I have one purpose left, a golden purpose,
how, from time’s weight, to free myself again.

I...Read more of this...

Skyscraper

by Carl Sandburg
 BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul...Read more of this...

Fisherman jims kids

by Eugene Field
 Fisherman Jim lived on the hill
With his bonnie wife an' his little boys;
'T wuz "Blow, ye winds, as blow ye will -
Naught we reck of your cold and noise!"
For happy and warm were he an' his,
And he dandled his kids upon his knee
To the song of the sea.

Fisherman Jim would sail all day,
But, when come night, upon the sands
His...Read more of this...

The Sycamores

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 In the outskirts of the village 
On the river's winding shores 
Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 
And another half-way told 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 
Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music 
At his violin's sound they grew, 
Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
Making Amphion's...Read more of this...

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