Famous Sailor Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sailor poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sailor poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sailor poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...at sun, which shall ere long retreat,
And leave their hills one half the year in shades.
Or that Aurora which the sailor sees
Beneath the pole in dancing beams of light,
Playing its gambols on the northern hills.
That light is vain and gives no genial heat,
To warm the tenants of those frozen climes,
Or give that heav'nly vigour to the soul,
Which truth divine and revelation brings;
And but for which each heart must still remain,
Hard as the rock on Scandana...Read more of this...
by
Neruda, Pablo
...not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...arge!
And clad in bright and burnished panoply
Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea!
To the dull sailors' sight her loosened looks
Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet
Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,
And, marking how the rising waters beat
Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried
To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side
But he, the overbold adulterer,
A dear profaner of great mysteries,
An ardent amorous idola...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ses, Annie Lee,
The prettiest little damsel in the port,
And Philip Ray the miller's only son,
And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad
Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd
Among the waste and lumber of the shore,
Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets,
Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats updrawn,
And built their castles of dissolving sand
To watch them overflow'd, or following up
And flying the white breaker, daily left
The little footprint daily wash'd away.
A na...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...en 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 his wings.
O strong sea-sailor,
Whose cheek turns paler
For wind or hail or
For fear of thee?
O far sea-farer,
O thunder-bearer,
Thy songs are rarer
Than soft songs be.
O fleet-foot stranger,
O north-sea ranger
Through days of danger
And ways of fear,
Blow thy horn here for us,
Blow the sky clear for us,
S...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...
FROM GIOCONDA'S DIARY
The wind died down,
the sea calmed down.
The ship makes strides toward Shanghai.
The sailors dream,
rocking in their sailcloth hammocks.
A song of the Indian Ocean plays
on their thick fleshy lips:
"The fire of the Indochina sun
warms the blood
like Malacca wine.
They lure sailors to gilded stars,
those Indochina nights,
those Indochina nights.
Slant-eyed yellow Bornese cabin boys
knifed in Sigapore bars
paint the iron-belt...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
..."Let's make him a sailor," said Father,
"And he will adventure the sea."
"A soldier," said Mother, "is rather
What I would prefer him to be."
"A lawyer," said Father, "would please me,
For then he could draw up my will."
"A doctor," said Mother, "would ease me;
Maybe he could give me a pill."
Said Father: "Lt's make him a curate,
A Bishop in gaiters to be.Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...es cease to lead,
And gently on the orphan head
Of innocence descend.-
But chiefly spare, O king of clouds!
The sailor on his airy shrouds;
When wrecks and beacons strew the steep,
And specters walk along the deep.
Milder yet thy snowy breezes
Pour on yonder tented shores,
Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes,
Or the Dark-brown Danube roars.
Oh, winds of winter! List ye there
To many a deep and dying groan;
Or start, ye demons of the midnight air,
...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...grave,
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!)
5
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.
Along all history, down the slopes,
As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising,
A ceaseless thought, a varied train—Lo, soul! to thee, thy sight, they rise,
The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions:
Again Vas...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ave my life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on,
To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship, full of rich words—full of joys....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ry church, or mid the clustering trees, the open air camp-meeting,
The fiddler in the tavern—the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,
The lowing cattle, bleating sheep—the crowing cock at dawn.
8
All songs of current lands come sounding ’round me,
The German airs of friendship, wine and love,
Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances—English warbles,
Chansons of France, Scotch tunes—and o’er the rest,
Italia’s peerless compositions.
Across the stage, with pallor on h...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...rops increase, and the barns are well-fill’d.
16
Elements merge in the night—ships make tacks in the dreams,
The sailor sails—the exile returns home,
The fugitive returns unharm’d—the immigrant is back beyond months and years,
The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood, with the well-known
neighbors and
faces,
They warmly welcome him—he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well off;
The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...myriads of seasons;
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion;
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
I resist anything better than my own diversity;
I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place;
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place;
The palpable is i...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...terie. Perhaps some of our own "blues" might not be the worse for bleaching.
(28) "Galiong?e," or Galiongi, a sailor, that is, a Turkish sailor; the Greeks navigate, the Turks work the guns. Their dress is picturesque; and I have seen the Capitan Pacha more than once wearing it as a kind of incog. Their legs, however, are generally naked. The buskins described in the text as sheathed behind with silver are those of an Arnaut robber, who was my host (he h...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...torial botanist,
26 And general lexicographer of mute
27 And maidenly greenhorns, now beheld himself,
28 A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass.
29 What word split up in clickering syllables
30 And storming under multitudinous tones
31 Was name for this short-shanks in all that brunt?
32 Crispin was washed away by magnitude.
33 The whole of life that still remained in him
34 Dwindled to one sound strumming in his ear,
35 Ubiquitous concussion, sl...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...ables pined, and wanted food. By grief enfeebled was I turned adrift, Helpless as sailor cast on desert rock; Nor morsel to my mouth that day did lift, Nor dared my hand at any door to knock. I lay, where with his drowsy mates, the cock From the cross timber of an out-house hung; How dismal tolled, that night, the city clock! At morn my sick heart hu...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...an rig slightly ridiculous, the Gothic typeface
Evoking sepia prints of my father at five in a pinafore or seven
In a sailor-suit feeding the Sunday birds, my grandmother
Framed in a trellis of mignonette, the aroma fragrant still,
The violet stock lingering and re-kindling our first garden
The autumn we moved in, the rampant blossoms cager in the soil
Of my father’s first sowing.
2
For us there was no garden, the cottage at Hall lngs
Had only a paved yard, wit...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...heir carnival -
I taking a sea bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red ******, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red ****** who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, ******, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation,
But Maria Concepcion was all my thought
watching the ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear d...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...luer than English skies.
You see it in ruffs and suits of armour,
You see it in wigs of many styles,
Soldier and sailor, judge and farmer—
That face has governed the British Isles,
By the power, for good or ill bestowed,
Only on those who live by code.
Oh, that inflexible code of living,
That seems so easy and unconstrained,
The Englishman's code of taking and giving
Rights and privileges pre-ordained,
Based since English life began
On the prime importance of ...Read more of this...
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