Famous Sails Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sails poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sails poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sails poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Alan Seeger
Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind,
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world.
I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes
On the way of...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Matelôts, vous déploirez les voiles.")
{XVI., May 5, 1839.}
Ye mariners! ye mariners! each sail to the breeze unfurled,
In joy or sorrow still pursue your course around the world;
And when the stars next sunset shine, ye anxiously will gaze
Upon the shore, a friend or foe, as the windy quarter lays....Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'd with the Heavens' majestic pace:
Or, call'd to more superior...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla
The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Adieu, patrie.")
{Bk. V. ix., Aug. 1, 1852.}
Farewell the strand,
The sails expand
Above!
Farewell the land
We love!
Farewell, old home where apples swing!
Farewell, gay song-birds on the wing!
Farewell, riff-raff
Of Customs' clerks who laugh
And shout:
"Farewell!" We'll quaff
...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A limpid lake, a diamond gem,
The moonbeams kissed with light;
And all the stars that heaven knew
Were mirrored in the night.
How fair the world, how fair the night,
When lake and river run
Like jeweled streams of fairy land
Beneath a silver sun.
The lake grew proud and claimed each star
That lay upon her breast;
"Ah!...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
There was a strife 'twixt man and maid--
Oh, that was at the birth of time!
But what befell 'twixt man and maid,
Oh, that's beyond the grip of rhyme.
'Twas "Sweet, I must not bide with you,"
And, "Love, I cannot bide alone";
For both were young and both were true.
And both were hard as the nether stone.
Beware the man who's crossed in love;
...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
A region desolate and wild.
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon;
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.
Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way:
In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall...Read more of this...
by
John Masefield
ONE road leads to London,
One road leads to Wales,
My road leads me seawards
To the white dipping sails.
One road leads to the river,
And it goes singing slow;
My road leads to shipping,
Where the bronzed sailors go.
Leads me, lures me, calls me
To salt green tossing sea;
A road without earth's road-dust
Is the...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
Song of the Indian Maid
O SORROW!
Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?¡ª
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes? 5
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
O Sorrow!
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?¡ª
To give the glow-worm light? 10
Or, on a moonless night,
To...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXCIV. I' piansi, or canto; che 'l celeste lume. AT HER RETURN, HIS SORROWS VANISH. I wept, but now I sing; its heavenly lightThat living sun conceals not from my view,But virtuous love therein revealeth trueHis holy purposes and precious might;Whence, as his wont, such flood of sorrow springsTo...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
MAN sails the deep awhile;
Loud runs the roaring tide;
The seas are wild and wide;
O'er many a salt, o'er many a desert mile,
The unchained breakers ride,
The quivering stars beguile.
Hope bears the sole command;
Hope, with unshaken eyes,
Sees flaw and storm arise;
Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,
Steers, under changing skies,
Unchanged toward the land.
O wind that bravely blows!
O hope that sails with...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
AFTER the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:
Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves—liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,...Read more of this...
by
Arthur Symons
The wind is rising on the sea,
The windy white foam-dancers leap;
And the sea moans uneasily,
And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.
Ridge after rocky ridge uplifts,
Wild hands, and hammers at the land,
Scatters in liquid dust, and drifts
To death among the dusty sand.
On the horizon's nearing line,
Where the sky rests, a visible...Read more of this...
by
Hart Crane
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes...Read more of this...
by
Ann Taylor
Little Ann and her mother were walking one day
Through London's wide city so fair,
And business obliged them to go by the way
That led them through Cavendish Square.
And as they pass'd by the great house of a Lord,
A beautiful chariot there came,
To take some most elegant ladies abroad,
Who straightway got into the same.
The ladies in feathers and...Read more of this...
by
William Morris
A ship with shields before the sun,
Six maidens round the mast,
A red-gold crown on every one,
A green gown on the last.
The fluttering green banners there
Are wrought with ladies' heads most fair,
And a portraiture of Guenevere
The middle of each sail doth bear.
A ship with sails before the wind,
And round the helm six knights,
Their heaumes are on, whereby, half blind,
They pass...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston,...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
Bless this little heart, this white soul that has won the kiss of
heaven for our earth.
He loves the light of the sun, he loves the sight of his
mother's face.
He has not learned to despise the dust, and to hanker after
gold.
Clasp him to your heart and bless him.
He has come into this land of an hundred cross-roads.
I know not how...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
IN cabin’d ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves—the large imperious waves—In
such,
Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine,
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star
at night,...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The sunlight fell with a golden gleam
On the waves of the rippling rill;
The pansies nodded their purple heads;
But the proud queen-rose stood still.
She loved the light and she loved the sun,
And the peaceful night when the day was done,
But the faithless sun in his careless way
Had broken her heart on that summer's day.
She had bathed her...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their...Read more of this...
by
Adrian Green
Drifting on a tide from long ago,
They swing at anchor silently
Wreathed in early morning mist,
Like ghosts grown mellow with antiquity.
With names like Gladys, Will and Edith May
Heroic legends motionless on ancient bows,
They are waiting for the breeze, patiently
Submissive to the whims of air and ebb.
Later, with windlass rattling as anchors are weighed,
Sails set at the stirring of wind over...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MANY a day and night my bark stood ready laden;
Waiting fav'ring winds, I sat with true friends round me,
Pledging me to patience and to courage,
In the haven.
And they spoke thus with impatience twofold:
"Gladly pray we for thy rapid passage,
Gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune
In the distant world is waiting for thee,
In our arms thoult find thy prize, and love...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails
Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
I know the devil has sufficient weight
To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he's damned. That man I...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Sails poems.