Famous Potomac Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston

...g 
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds. 
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking 
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards 
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature 
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember. 
Special tonight because I made her into a story 
that I grew to know and savor. 
A reason to worry, 
Rose, when you fix an old death like that, 
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended. 
We bank over Bost...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


American Feuillage

...lare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up; 
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and
 Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; 
In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or
 lapping
 the
 Saginaw waters to drink; 
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking
 silently; 
In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done—they ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Brother of All with Generous Hand

...ur streams alone, you rivers,
By you, your banks, Connecticut, 
By you, and all your teeming life, Old Thames, 
By you, Potomac, laving the ground Washington trod—by you Patapsco, 
You, Hudson—you, endless Mississippi—not by you alone, 
But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.

5
Lo, Soul, by this tomb’s lambency, 
The darkness of the arrogant standards of the world, 
With all its flaunting aims, ambitions, pleasures. 

(Old, commonplace, and rusty saws, 
The rich...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

By Broad Potomac's Shore

...1
BY broad Potomac’s shore—again, old tongue! 
(Still uttering—still ejaculating—canst never cease this babble?) 
Again, old heart so gay—again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning; 
Again the freshness and the odors—again Virginia’s summer sky, pellucid blue and
 silver, 
Again the forenoon purple of the hills,
Again the deathless grass, so noiseless, s...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Potomac River Mist

...d to a new moon for us and a gang from over the river sang ragtime to a ukelele.
The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we hunted the fog-swept Lincoln Memorial, white as a blond woman’s arm.
We circled the city of Washington and came back home four o’clock in the morning, passing a sign: House Where Abraham Lincoln Died, Admission 25 Cents.

I got a letter from him in Sweden and I sent him a postcard from Norway .. every newspaper from America ran news of “the flu.”...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl


Potomac Town in February

...THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am.
The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up.
The white water says: I go on; around, under, over, I go on.
A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they nearly got me last year.
A sliver of moon slides by on a high wind calling: I know why; I’ll see you to-morrow; I’ll tell...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Smoke Rose Gold

...THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
 Out of haze over the sunset,
 Out of a smoke rose gold:
One star shines over the sunset.
Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold,
The haze changes from sunset to star.
The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark.
A star might call: It’s a long way across....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

When I was small a Woman died --

...When I was small, a Woman died --
Today -- her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac --
His face all Victory

To look at her -- How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round --

If pride shall be in Paradise --
Ourself cannot decide --
Of their imperial Conduct --
No person testified --

But, proud in Apparition --
That Woman and her Boy
Pass back and forth, before my Brain
As even in...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

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