Famous Sea(A) Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sea(A) poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sea(a) poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sea(a) poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Pablo Neruda
You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.
Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
On this wondrous sea
Sailing silently,
Ho! Pilot, ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar --
Where the storm is o'er?
In the peaceful west
Many the sails at rest --
The anchors fast --
Thither I pilot thee --
Land Ho! Eternity!
Ashore at last!...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile.
The brilliant blue of the morning sea, of the cloudless sky,
the yellow shore; all lovely,
all bathed in light.
Let me stand here. And let me pretend I see all this
(I really did see it for a minute when I first stopped)
and not my usual day-dreams here too,
my memories, those images...Read more of this...
by
Anne Killigrew
SO the renowned Ithacensian Queen
In Tears for her Telemachus was seen,
When leaving Home, he did attempt the Ire
Of rageing Seas, to seek his absent Sire:
Such bitter Sighs her tender Breast did rend;
But had she known a God did him attend,
And would with Glory bring him safe again,
Bright Thoughts would then have dispossess't her Pain....Read more of this...
by
Omer Tarin
Once before I've heard this
anguished cry
A long-drawn note of many-lettered woe,
The great open beak straining
against the roar of raging surf;
Head, thrown back, taut
against the distant sails
Anger flickering in eyes flecked with amber,
rolling in lonely knowledge,
this bond servant of the sea,
tied by its giant wingspan
to the torturous flight of sainthood
Martyred
in its terrible existence
murdered
by the yellow fog of banality
Victim
to...Read more of this...
by
Dorothea Mackeller
From my window I can see,
Where the sandhills dip,
One far glimpse of open sea.
Just a slender slip
Curving like a crescent moon—
Yet a greater prize
Than the harbour garden-fair
Spread beneath my eyes.
Just below me swings the bay,
Sings a sunny tune,
But my heart is far away
Out beyond the dune;
Clearer far...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.
They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Under the light of the silver moon
We two sat, when our hearts were young;
The night was warm with the breath of June,
And loud from the meadow the cricket sung,
And darker and deeper, oh, love, than the sea,
Were your dear eyes, as they beamed to me.
The moon hung clear, and the night was still:
The waters...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
A S J Tessimond
1
(Windless Summer)
Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed
Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes.
2
(Winter)
Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks,
Noosing, slipping and noosing again for ever.
3
(Windy Summer)
Over-sea going, under returning, meet
And make a wheel, a shell, to hold the sun....Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
A man came slowly from the setting sun,
To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun,
And said, 'I am that swineherd whom you bid
Go watch the road between the wood and tide,
But now I have no need to watch it more.'
Then Emer cast the web upon the floor,
And raising arms all raddled with the dye,
Parted her lips with a loud sudden...Read more of this...
by
Kobayashi Issa
These sea slugs,
they just don't seem
Japanese....Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
There is found a tiny sea shell,Half-imbedded in the sand,Sometimes flashing in the moonlight,Like a diamond on the strand.And from out the winding chambersThat are hid within the shell,Ever steals a curious music,That doth never sink nor swell.But, like the far-off voice of ocean,Murmurs forth its monotone,Holding thus within its bosomE’er an ocean of its own.Thus the sea shells ever...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.
Sheer miracles of loveliness
Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Anemones, salt, passionless,
Blow flower-like; just enough alive
To blow and multiply and thrive.
Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,
Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1902
Who hath desired the Sea? -- the sight of salt wind-hounded --
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber win hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing --
Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing --
His Sea in no showing the same his Sea and...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Sea Shell, Sea Shell,
Sing me a song, O Please!
A song of ships, and sailor men,
And parrots, and tropical trees,
Of islands lost in the Spanish Main
Which no man ever may find again,
Of fishes and corals under the waves,
And seahorses stabled in great green caves.
Sea Shell, Sea Shell,
Sing of the things you know so well....Read more of this...
by
Joaquin Miller
AH! there be souls none understand;
Like clouds, they cannot touch the land.
Unanchored ships, they blow and blow,
Sail to and fro, and then go down
In unknown seas that none shall know,
Without one ripple of renown.
Call these not fools, the test of worth
Is not the hold you have of earth.
Ay, there be gentlest...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea.
The walls and towers are warmed and gleam.
Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves.
The city stirs like one that is half in dream.
And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows,
Where one by one we wake and rise.
We gaze at the pale grey lustrous sea a moment,
We rub...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
By Sidney and Clifford Lanier.
O wish that's vainer than the plash
Of these wave-whimsies on the shore:
"Give us a pearl to fill the gash --
God, let our dead friend live once more!"
O wish that's stronger than the stroke
Of yelling wave and snapping levin;
"God, lift us o'er the Last Day's smoke,
All white, to Thee and her in Heaven!"
O wish that's swifter...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate,
I will tell you what they sigh,
Where those minarets and steeples
Prick the open Thanet sky.
Happy bells of eighteen-ninety,
Bursting from your freestone tower!
Recalling laurel, shrubs and privet,
Red geraniums in flower.
Feet that scamper on the asphalt
Through the Borough Council grass,
Till they hide inside the shelter
Bright with ironwork and glass,
Striving chains of ordered children
Purple by the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea --
And that -- a further -- and the Three
But a presumption be --
Of Periods of Seas --
Unvisited of Shores --
Themselves the Verge of Seas to be --
Eternity -- is Those --...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I stood by the shore at the death of day,
As the sun sank flaming red;
And the face of the waters that spread away
Was as gray as the face of the dead.
And I heard the cry of the wanton sea
And the moan of the wailing wind;
For love's sweet pain in his heart had he,
But the gray old sea had sinned.
The wind...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
A gallant city has been builded far
In the pied heaven,
Bannered with crimson, sentinelled by star
Of crystal even;
Around a harbor of the twilight glowing,
With jubilant waves about its gateways flowing
A city of the Land of Lost Delight,
On seas enchanted,
Presently to be lost in mist moon-white
And music-haunted;
Given but briefly to our raptured vision,
With all its opal towers and...Read more of this...
by
John Masefield
"Goneys an' gullies an' all o' the birds o' the sea
They ain't no birds, not really", said Billy the Dane.
"Not mollies, nor gullies, nor goneys at all", said he,
"But simply the sperrits of mariners livin' again.
"Them birds goin' fishin' is nothin' but the souls o' the drowned,
Souls o' the drowned, an' the kicked as are never no more
An' that...Read more of this...
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