Famous Rapids Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Green Stream

...l of a green stream, 
Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains 
On a journey of less than thirty miles.... 
Rapids hum over heaped rocks; 
But where light grows dim in the thick pines, 
The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns 
And weeds are lush along the banks. 
...Down in my heart I have always been as pure 
As this limpid water is.... 
Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock 
And to cast a fishing-line forever! ...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang


A Green Stream

...nnel of a green stream, 
Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains 
On a journey of less than thirty miles.... 
Rapids hum over heaped rocks; 
But where light grows dim in the thick pines, 
The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns 
And weeds are lush along the banks. 
...Down in my heart I have always been as pure 
As this limpid water is.... 
Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock 
And to cast a fishing-line forever!...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang

As Consequent Etc

...k’s reticulations, 
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, 
Songs of continued years I sing.

Life’s ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend, 
With the old streams of death.) 

Some threading Ohio’s farm-fields or the woods, 
Some down Colorado’s cañons from sources of perpetual snow, 
Some half-hid in Oregon, or away southward in Texas,
Some in the north finding their way to Erie, Niagara, Ottawa, 
Some to Atlantica’s bays, and so to the great salt brine. 

In ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor

...itician,
What's the use?
I think of you,
Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,
When you were being towed up the rapids
Toward some political job or other
In the city of Chungshou.
You made it, I guess,
By dark.

But it is 1960, it is almost spring again,
And the tall rocks of Minneapolis
Build me my own black twilight
Of bamboo ropes and waters.
Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved?
Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness
Of the Midwest?Where is Mi...Read more of this...
by Wright, James

At the Cedars

...-- 
One is Virginie --
Hold hard -- Baptiste!
Listen to me.

The whole drive was jammed
In that bend at the Cedars,
The rapids were dammed
With the logs tight rammed
And crammed; you might know
The Devil had clinched them below.

We worked three days -- not a budge,
'She's as tight as a wedge, on the ledge,'
Says our foreman;
'Mon Dieu! boys, look here,
We must get this thing clear.'
He cursed at the men
And we went for it then;
With our cant-dogs arow,
We just gave he-yo-ho;...Read more of this...
by Scott, Duncan Campbell


At the Long Sault

...th delight for his sake 
To the jaws of hell. 

The mists hung blue and still on the stream 
At the marge of dawn; 
The rapids laughed till we saw their teeth 
Like a snarling wolf's fangs glisten and gleam; 
Sweetly the pine trees underneath 
The shadows slept in the moonlight wan; 
Sweetly beneath the steps of the spring 
The great, grim forest was blossoming; 
And we fought, that springs for other men 
Might blossom again. 

Faint, thirst-maddened we prayed and fought 
By ...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud

Four Songs Of Four Seasons

...s callow,
Through pool and shallow,
To wind and lee,
Till, no more tongue-tied,
Full flood and young tide
Roar down the rapids and storm the sea.

As men's cheeks faded
On shores invaded,
When shorewards waded
The lords of fight;
When churl and craven
Saw hard on haven
The wide-winged raven
At mainmast height;
When monks affrighted
To windward sighted
The birds full-flighted
Of swift sea-kings;
So earth turns paler
When Storm the sailor
Steers in with a roar in the race of hi...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Hiawathas Fishing

...wn into that darksome cavern 
Plunged the headlong Hiawatha, 
As a log on some black river 
Shoots and plunges down the rapids, 
Found himself in utter darkness, 
Groped about in helpless wonder, 
Till he felt a great heart beating, 
Throbbing in that utter darkness.
And he smote it in his anger, 
With his fist, the heart of Nahma, 
Felt the mighty King of Fishes 
Shudder through each nerve and fibre, 
Heard the water gurgle round him 
As he leaped and staggered through it, 
...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Hiawathas Friends

...e river, 
Sheer into the swift Pauwating, 
Where it still is seen in Summer.
Once as down that foaming river, 
Down the rapids of Pauwating, 
Kwasind sailed with his companions, 
In the stream he saw a beaver, 
Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers, 
Struggling with the rushing currents, 
Rising, sinking in the water.
Without speaking, without pausing, 
Kwasind leaped into the river, 
Plunged beneath the bubbling surface, 
Through the whirlpools chased the beaver, 
Followed him amo...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

His Dream Of The Skyland

...path; I leaned against a rock; I swooned.

Roaring bears and howling dragons roused me—
Oh, the clamorous waters of the rapids!
I trembled in the deep forest, and shuddered at the overhanging crags, 
one heaped upon another.
Clouds on clouds gathered above, threatening rain;
The waters gushed below, breaking into mist.

A peal of blasting thunder!
The mountains crumbled.
The stone gate of the hollow heaven
Opened wide, revealing
A vasty realm of azure without bottom,
Sun and ...Read more of this...
by Po, Li

Oban

...ng,
Just as they did when Ossian and Fingal watched them from the shore,
And, no doubt, they have felt delighted by the rapids' thundering roar. 

Then there's Ganevan with its sparkling bay,
And its crescent of silver sand glittering in the sun's bright array,
And Dunolly's quiet shores where sea crabs abide,
And its beautiful little pools left behind by the tide. 

Then take a sail across to Kerrera some day,
And see Gylen Castle with its wild-strewn shore and bay,
With its...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Our Guardian Angels and Their Children

...Where a river roars in rapids
And doves in maples fret,
Where peace has decked the pastures
Our guardian angels met.

Long they had sought each other
In God's mysterious name,
Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
Alone, with hope aflame:

Amid the demon deeps had wound
By many a fearful way.
As they beheld each other
Their shout made glad the day.

No need of purse delayed them,
No ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

Rapids

...Fall's leaves are redder than 
spring's flowers, have no pollen, 
and also sometimes fly, as the wind 
schools them out or down in shoals 
or droves: though I 
have not been here long, I can 
look up at the sky at night and tell 
how things are likely to go for 
the next hundred million years: 
the universe will probably not find 
a way to vanish nor I 
in...Read more of this...
by Ammons, A R

Tenth Commandment

...a
Had gone from barbarism to amnesia without
A period of high decadence, which meant something,
But what? A raft on the rapids? The violinist
At the gate? Oh, absolute is the law of biology.
For the *********** seminar, what should she wear?...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David

The Call Of The Wild

...drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
 Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
 Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
 Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
 The bunch-grass ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Explorer

...mber saw illimitable plains!

'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em;
 Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em --
 Saw the plant to feed a people -- up and waiting for the power!

Well, I know who'll take the credit -- all the clever chaps that followed --
 Came, a dozen men together -- never knew my desert-fears;
Tracked me by the camps I'd quitte...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Half-breed Girl

...For the strange, still years,
For what she knows and knows not,
For the wells of ancient tears.

A voice calls from the rapids,
Deep, careless and free,
A voice that is larger than her life
Or than her death shall be.

She covers her face with her blanket,
Her fierce soul hates her breath,
As it cries with a sudden passion
For life or death....Read more of this...
by Scott, Duncan Campbell

The Law Of The Yukon

...e, winning me honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Nostomaniac

...runs the devil knows where;
My hand is athrill on the paddle, the birch-bark bounds like a bird.
Hark to the rumble of rapids! Here in my morris chair
Eager and tense I'm straining -- isn't it most absurd?
Now in the churn and the lather, foam that hisses and stings,
Leap I, keyed for the struggle, fury and fume and roar;
Rocks are spitting like hell-cats -- Oh, it's a sport for kings,
Life on a twist of the paddle . . . there's my "Kim" on the floor.

How I thrill and I vis...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

...thunder, heard we a canorous roar.
Leaping and boiling and seething, saw we a cauldron afume;
There was the rage of the rapids, there was the menace of doom.

The river springs like a racer, sweeps through a gash in the rock;
Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and rears at the shock;
Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury and pain;
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again.

Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears;
Cal...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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