Famous Pool Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Purse-Seine

by Robinson Jeffers
 Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
 of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net, 
 unable to see the phosphorescence of the 
 shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting 
 Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off 
 Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of...Read more of this...

Penmaen Pool

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 For the Visitors' Book at the Inn


Who long for rest, who look for pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school
O where live well your lease of leisure
But here at, here at Penmaen Pool? 
You'll dare the Alp? you'll dart the skiff?— 
Each sport has here its tackle and tool:
Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff;
Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen...Read more of this...

A stagnant pleasure like a Pool

by Emily Dickinson
 A stagnant pleasure like a Pool
That lets its Rushes grow
Until they heedless tumble in
And make the Water slow

Impeding navigation bright
Of Shadows going down
Yet even this shall rouse itself
When freshets come along....Read more of this...

Love's Treacherous Pool

by Victor Hugo
 ("Jeune fille, l'amour c'est un miroir.") 
 
 {XXVI., February, 1835.} 


 Young maiden, true love is a pool all mirroring clear, 
 Where coquettish girls come to linger in long delight, 
 For it banishes afar from the face all the clouds that besmear 
 The soul truly bright; 
 But tempts you to ruffle its surface; drawing...Read more of this...

Hymn to Love

by Lascelles Abercrombie
 We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As théou, Léove, were the déep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken: 

But burn’d not through us thy imagining
Like fiérce méood in a séong céaught,
We were as clamour’d words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken. 

For what...Read more of this...

Hugos pool in the forest

by Eugene Field
 How calm, how beauteous and how cool--
How like a sister to the skies,
Appears the broad, transparent pool
That in this quiet forest lies.
The sunshine ripples on its face,
And from the world around, above,
It hath caught down the nameless grace
Of such reflections as we love.

But deep below its surface crawl
The reptile horrors of the night--
The dragons, lizards, serpents--all
The hideous brood that...Read more of this...

His Mansion in the Pool

by Emily Dickinson
 His Mansion in the Pool
The Frog forsakes --
He rises on a Log
And statements makes --
His Auditors two Worlds
Deducting me --
The Orator of April
Is hoarse Today --
His Mittens at his Feet
No Hand hath he --
His eloquence a Bubble
As Fame should be --
Applaud him to discover
To your chagrin
Demosthenes has vanished
In Waters Green --...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts XVI: She Dwelt Here by the Pool

by Rabindranath Tagore
 She dwelt here by the pool with its landing-stairs in ruins. Many
an evening she had watched the moon made dizzy by the shaking of
bamboo leaves, and on many a rainy day the smell of the wet earth
had come to her over the young shoots of rice.
Her pet name is known here among those date-palm groves and
in the courtyards where...Read more of this...

Pool

by Carl Sandburg
 OUT of the fire
Came a man sunken
To less than cinders,
A tea-cup of ashes or so.
And I,
The gold in the house,
Writhed into a stiff pool....Read more of this...

By A Swimming Pool Outside Syracusa

by Billy Collins
 All afternoon I have been struggling
to communicate in Italian
with Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun
to resemble the two male characters
in my Italian for Beginners,
the ones who are always shopping
or inquiring about the times of trains,
and now I can hardly speak or write English.

I have made important pronouncements
in this remote limestone valley
with its trickle of a river,
stating that it seems...Read more of this...

The Pool And The Soul

by Victor Hugo
 ("Comme dans les étangs.") 
 
 {X., May, 1839.} 


 As in some stagnant pool by forest-side, 
 In human souls two things are oft descried; 
 The sky,—which tints the surface of the pool 
 With all its rays, and all its shadows cool; 
 The basin next,—where gloomy, dark and deep, 
 Through slime and mud black...Read more of this...

Stopping at Incense Storing Temple

by Wang Wei
 Not know incense store temple 
Few enter cloud peaks 
Ancient trees no person path 
Deep hills what place bell 
Spring sound choke sheer rock 
Sun colour cold green pines 
Dusk empty pool bend 
Peace meditation control fierce dragon 


I did not know the incense storing temple, 
I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks. 
No man on the...Read more of this...

By Loe Pool

by Arthur Symons
 The pool glitters, the fishes leap in the sun 
With joyous fins, and dive in the pool again; 
I see the corn in sheaves, and the harvestmen, 
And the cows coming down to the water one by one. 
Dragon-flies mailed in lapis and malachite 
Flash through the bending reeds and blaze on the pool; 
Sea-ward, where trees cluster, the...Read more of this...

Before the Battle

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Music of whispering trees 
Hushed by a broad-winged breeze 
Where shaken water gleams; 
And evening radiance falling 
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams. 

I have no need to pray 
That fear may pass away; 
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight 
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool 
And...Read more of this...

The Wood Pool

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Here is a voice that soundeth low and far
And lyric­voice of wind among the pines,
Where the untroubled, glimmering waters are,
And sunlight seldom shines. 

Elusive shadows linger shyly here,
And wood-flowers blow, like pale, sweet spirit-bloom, 
And white, slim birches whisper, mirrored clear
In the pool's lucent gloom. 

Here Pan might pipe, or wandering dryad kneel
To view her loveliness beside the brim,
Or...Read more of this...

The Pool

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
By the pool that I see in my dreams, dear love,
I have sat with you time and again;
And listened beneath the dank leaves, dear love,
To the sibilant sound of the rain.
And the pool, it is silvery bright, dear love,
And as pure as the heart of a maid,
As sparkling and dimpling, it darkles and shines
In the depths of the heart of...Read more of this...

Light

by John Milton
 HAIL holy light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born, 
Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam 
May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light, 
And never but in unapproached light 
Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee, 
Bright effluence of bright essence increate. 
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream, 
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun, 
Before the Heavens...Read more of this...

The Pool

by Hilda Doolittle
 Are you alive? 
I touch you. 
You quiver like a sea-fish. 
I cover you with my net. 
What are you - banded one?...Read more of this...

Tiger Drinking At Forest Pool

by Ruth Padel
 Water, moonlight, danger, dream.
Bronze urn, angled on a tree root: one
Slash of light, then gone. A red moon
Seen through clouds, or almost seen.

Treasure found but lost, flirting between
The worlds of lost and found. An unjust law
Repealed, a wish come true, a lifelong
Sadness healed. Haven, in the mind,

To anyone hurt by littleness. A prayer
For the moment, saved; treachery forgiven.
Flame of...Read more of this...

Cleopatra

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 HER mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
And the amorous deep lids divine.

Her great curled hair makes luminous
Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin.
Shall she not have the hearts of us
To shatter, and the loves therein
To shred between her fingers thus?

Small ruined broken...Read more of this...

A Day Off

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Let us put awhile away 
All the cares of work-a-day, 
For a golden time forget, 
Task and worry, toil and fret, 
Let us take a day to dream 
In the meadow by the stream. 

We may lie in grasses cool 
Fringing a pellucid pool, 
We may learn the gay brook-runes 
Sung on amber afternoons, 
And the keen wind-rhyme that...Read more of this...

Thirst

by Claude McKay
 My spirit wails for water, water now! 
My tongue is aching dry, my throat is hot 
For water, fresh rain shaken from a bough, 
Or dawn dews heavy in some leafy spot. 
My hungry body's burning for a swim 
In sunlit water where the air is cool, 
As in Trout Valley where upon a limb 
The golden finch sings...Read more of this...

By the Pool of the Third Rosses

by Arthur Symons
 I heard the sighing of the reed 
In the grey pool in the green land, 
The sea-wind in the long reeds sighing 
Between the green hill and the sand. 

I heard the sighing of the reeds 
Day after day, night after night; 
I heard the whirring wild ducks flying, 
I saw the sea-gull's wheeling flight. 

I heard the sighing...Read more of this...

The Kingfisher

by William Henry Davies
 It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues;
And, as her mother’s name was Tears,
So runs it in my blood to choose
For haunts the lonely pools, and keep
In company with trees that weep.
Go you and, with such glorious hues,
Live with proud peacocks in green parks;
On lawns as smooth as shining glass,
Let every feather show its...Read more of this...

Bells Pool And Sleep

by A S J Tessimond
 Bells overbrim with sound
And spread from cupolas
Out through the shaking air
Endless unbreaking circles
Cool and clear as water.

A stone dropped in the water
Opens the lips of the pool
And starts the unovertaking
Rings, till the pool is full
Of waves as the air of bells.

The deep-sea bell of sleep
Under the pool of the mind
Flowers in concentric circles
Of annihilation till
Both sight and sound die...Read more of this...

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