Famous Pirates Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Roscoe Purkapile

by Edgar Lee Masters
 She loved me. Oh! how she loved me!
I never had a chance to escape
From the day she first saw me.
But then after we were married I thought
She might prove her mortality and let me out,
Or she might divorce me.
But few die, none resign.
Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.
But she never complained. She said...Read more of this...

Lyman frederick and jim

by Eugene Field
 (FOR THE FELLOWSHIP CLU 

Lyman and Frederick and Jim, one day,
Set out in a great big ship--
Steamed to the ocean adown the bay
Out of a New York slip.
"Where are you going and what is your game?"
The people asked those three.
"Darned if we know; but all the same
Happy as larks are we;
And happier still we're going to be!"
Said Lyman
And Frederick
And...Read more of this...

Lepanto

by G K Chesterton
 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...

The Star-Apple Kingdom

by Derek Walcott
 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the...Read more of this...

Mrs. Purkapile

by Edgar Lee Masters
 He ran away and was gone for a year.
When he came home he told me the silly story
Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
And kept in chains so he could not write me.
I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well
What he was doing, and that he met
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then
When she went to...Read more of this...

The Child and the Mariner

by William Henry Davies
 A dear old couple my grandparents were, 
And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven 
The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; 
Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them 
Death was a rainbow in Eternity, 
That promised everlasting brightness soon. 
An old seafaring man was he; a rough 
Old man, but kind; and hairy,...Read more of this...

The Chinese Nightingale

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Song in Chinese Tapestries


"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you...Read more of this...

Blight

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and...Read more of this...

Epistle to Katherine, Lady Aubigny

by Ben Jonson
  XIII. — EPISTLE TO KATHARINE LADY AUBIGNY.           As what they have lost t' expect, they dare deride. So both the prais'd and praisers suffer ; yet, For others ill ought none their good forget. I therefore, who profess myself in love With every virtue, wheresoe'er it move, And howsoever ;  as I am at feudBy arts, and practice of the...Read more of this...

Captain Teach alias Black Beard

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Edward Teach was a native of Bristol, and sailed from that port
On board a privateer, in search of sport,
As one of the crew, during the French War in that station,
And for personal courage he soon gained his Captain's approbation. 

'Twas in the spring of 1717, Captajn Harnigold and Teach sailed from Providence
For the continent of America, and no further...Read more of this...

Portrait of a Boy

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 After the whipping he crawled into bed, 
Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping. 
How funny uncle's hat had looked striped red! 
He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping 
A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before 
In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed, 
Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor 
Fat motes danced. He sobbed,...Read more of this...

The Madness Of King Goll

by William Butler Yeats
 I sat on cushioned otter-skin:
My word was law from Ith to Emain,
And shook at Inver Amergin
The hearts of the world-troubling seamen,
And drove tumult and war away
From girl and boy and man and beast;
The fields grew fatter day by day,
The wild fowl of the air increased;
And every ancient Ollave said,
While he bent down his fading head.
'He drives away the Northern...Read more of this...

A Ballad of John Silver

by John Masefield
 We were schooner-rigged and rakish, 
with a long and lissome hull, 
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; 
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, 
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. 

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, 
We had each...Read more of this...

Pirates' Song

by Victor Hugo
 ("Nous emmenions en esclavage.") 
 
 {VIII., March, 1828.} 


 We're bearing fivescore Christian dogs 
 To serve the cruel drivers: 
 Some are fair beauties gently born, 
 And some rough coral-divers. 
 We hardy skimmers of the sea 
 Are lucky in each sally, 
 And, eighty strong, we send along 
 The dreaded Pirate Galley. 
...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Pirates 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