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Famous Squall Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Chesterton, G K
...s decay; the pedants pall; 
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,

And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational— 
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray

So secret that the very sky seems small— 
I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

ENVOI 
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, 
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;

Even to-day your royal head may fall, 
I think I will not hang myself to-day...Read more of this...



by Wilbur, Richard
...nd hats hurl
 past,
 Blurring to sheer verb,

Shift at the corner into uproarious gear
And make it around the turn in a squall
 of traction,
The headlong bell maintaining sure and
 clear,
 Thought is degraded action!

Beautiful, heavy, unweary, loud,
 obvious thing!
I stand here purged of nuance, my
 mind a blank.
All I was brooding upon has taken
 wing,
 And I have you to thank.

As you howl beyond hearing I carry you
 into my mind,
Ladders and brass and all, there t...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...', moored my boat,
COM-plete! then went to bed and slept as sound
As if I'd paid a note.

"Now on that very night a squall,
Cum up from some'eres -- some bad place!
An' blowed an' tore an' reared an' pitched an' all,
-- I had to run a race

"Right out o' bed from that hotel
An' git to yonder risin' ground,
For, 'twixt the sea that riz and rain that fell,
I pooty nigh was drowned!

"An' thar I stood till mornin' cum,
Right on yon little knoll of sand,
FreQUENTly wishin' I ...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ck 
To the dusty little table and the papers in the rack, 
And his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly children squall, 
And he thinks there's something healthy in the bush-life after all. 
But we'll go no more a-droving in the wind or in the sun, 
For out fathers' hearts have failed us, and the droving days are done. 

There's a nasty dash of danger where the long-horned bullock wheels, 
And we like to live in comfort and to get our reg'lar meals. 
For to...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...the lost cathedral
Chimes of the rocked buoys.

Where the anchor rode like a gull
Miles over the moonstruck boat
A squall of birds bellowed and fell,
A cloud blew the rain from its throat;

He saw the storm smoke out to kill
With fuming bows and ram of ice,
Fire on starlight, rake Jesu's stream;
And nothing shone on the water's face

But the oil and bubble of the moon,
Plunging and piercing in his course
The lured fish under the foam
Witnessed with a kiss.

Whales in...Read more of this...



by Carman, Bliss
...ill, 
Like a great breath which puffs across my sill, 
And then is still; 


It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall; 
Squall after squall, 
Gust upon crowding gust, 
It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust 
With glory or lust. 


It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come 
None knows wherefrom, 
The viewless draughty tide 
And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide, 
And then subside, 


Along these ghostly corridors and halls 
Like faint footfalls; 
The hangin...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...
Give answer all. 

When evening dim 
Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul, 
Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall, -- 
These are our hymn. 

Women, with tongues 
Like polar needles, ever on the jar; 
Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep fountains are 
Within their lungs. 

Children, with drums 
Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass; 
Peripatetics with a blade of grass 
Between their thumbs. 

Vagrants, whose arts 
Have caged some devil in thei...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...r maquette, the ramrod-straight colonel 
high above his black troops. We crouched on wet gravel 
and waited out the squall; the hieratic woman 

-- a wingless angel? -- floating horizontally 
above the soldiers, her robe billowing like plaster dust, 
seemed so far above us, another century's 
allegorical decor, an afterthought 
who'd never descend to the purely physical 
soldiers, the nearly breathing bronze ranks crushed 

into a terrible compression of perspective, 
as ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...h bore his weakness cheerfully.
For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck
See thro' the gray skirts of a lifting squall
The boat that bears the hope of life approach
To save the life despair'd of, than he saw
Death dawning on him, and the close of all. 

For thro' that dawning gleam'd a kindlier hope
On Enoch thinking `after I am gone,
Then may she learn I loved her to the last.'
He call'd aloud for Miriam Lane and said
`Woman, I have a secret--only swear,
Befo...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...air and slush with granite maw, 
 The sleet upon the griffins spits, and all 
 The Saurian monsters, answering to the squall, 
 Flap wings; while through the broken ceiling fall 
 Torrents of rain upon the forms beneath, 
 Dragons and snak'd Medusas gnashing teeth 
 In the dismantled rooms. Like armored knight 
 The granite Castle fights with all its might, 
 Resisting through the winter. All in vain, 
 The heaven's bluster, January's rain, 
 And those dread element...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...flea,
And there was joy and rapture in the Scottish Commy-tee.
"Jist let them have their saxophones wi' constipated squall;
We're having Heaven's music now," said Treasurer MacCall.
But the dancers waxed impatient, and they rather seemed to fret
For Maloney and the jazz of his Hibernian Quartette.
Yet little recked the Piper, as he swung with head on high,
Lamenting with MacCrimmon on the heather hills of Skye.
With Highland passion in his heart he held the ce...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...weet eyes!) fall straight--on the Review!
I by her side--all undetected,
While those cursed columns are inspected;
Loud squall the children overhead,
Still she reads on, till all is read:
At last she lays that darling by,
And asks--"What makes the baby cry?"

Already now the toilet's care
Claims from her couch the restless fair;
The toilet's care!--the glass has won
Just half a glance, and all is done!
A snappish--pettish word or so
Warns the poor maid 'tis time to go:--
Not ...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...uarter-deck, 
And saw the sky and saw the wreck. 

Below, a butt for sailors' jeers, 
White as the sky when a white squall nears, 
Huddled the crowd of the prisoners. 

Over the bridge of the tottering plank, 
Where the sea shook and the gulf yawned blank, 
They shrieked and struggled and dropped and sank, 

Pinioned arms and hands bound fast. 
One girl alone was left at last. 

Sir Henry Gaunt was a mighty lord. 
He sat in state at the Council board; 
The...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...o'-wars
start reeling inland, quick, quick an archery
of flying fish miss us! Vince say: "You notice?"
and a black-mane squall pounce on the sail
like a dog on a pigeon, and it snap the neck
of the Flight and shake it from head to tail.
"Be Jesus, I never see sea get so rough
so fast! That wind come from God back pocket!"
"Where Cap'n headin? Like the man gone blind!"
"If we's to drong, we go drong, Vince, fock-it!"
"Shabine, say your prayers, if life leave you any!"

I h...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...r God that saved us whole.

Yet, caring so, not overmuch we care
 To brace and trim for every foolish blast,
If the squall be pleased to seep us unaware,
 He may bellow off to leeward like the last
  (Foul weather!)
We will blame it on the deep (for the watch must have their sleep),
 And Love can come and wake us when 'tis past.

Oh launch them down with music from the beach,
 Oh warp them out with garlands from the quays --
Most resolute -- a damsel unto each --
 New...Read more of this...

by Kingsley, Charles
...
8 Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
9 And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
10 They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
11 And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
12 But men must work, and women must weep,
13 Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
14 And the harbour bar be moaning.

15 Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
16 In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
17 And the women are weeping and wringin...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ut the size 
Of half-a-crown, a little speck appear'd 
(I've seen a something like it in the skies 
In the ?gean, ere a squall); it near'd, 
And growing bigger, took another guise; 
Like an a?rial ship it tack'd, and steer'd, 
Or was steer'd (I am doubtful of the grammar 
Of the last phrase, which makes the stanza stammer; — 

LVIII 

But take your choice): and then it grew a cloud; 
And so it was — a cloud of witnesses. 
But such a cloud! No land e'er saw a crowd 
Of loc...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...ath that blows the gale
And death that holds the tiller as we ride.
For he's the king of all
In the tempest and the squall,
And the ruler of the Ocean wild and wide!...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
.... 

And on the 19th of November, they hove in sight of Aspinwall,
But little did they think there was going to be a squall;
When all on a sudden, the sea came rolling in,
And a sound was heard in the heavens, of a rather peculiar din. 

Then the vivid lightning played around them, and the thunder did roar,
And the rain came pouring down, and lashed the barque all o'er;
Then the Captain's Wife and Children were ordered below,
And every one on board began to run to and ...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...l at last
Overboard went her mizzen-mast.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.

Then a fierce squall struck the 'Loch Achray'
And bowed her down to her water-way;
Her main-shrouds gave and her forestay,
And a green sea carried her wheel away;
Ere the watch below had time to dress
She was cluttered up in a blushing mess.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.

She couldn't lay-to nor yet pay-off,
And she got swept in the bloody...Read more of this...

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