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Famous Steaming Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Plath, Sylvia
...and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop. 
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ----
The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detona...Read more of this...



by Hikmet, Nazim
...>
The whites have tall ships,
the yellows' boats are small.
A thick whistle.
 A thin Chinese scream.
A ship steaming into the harbor
 capsized a straw-sailed boat...
Moonlight.
Night.
Handcuffed,
 Gioconda waits.
Blow, wind, blow...
A voice:
"All right, the lighter.
Burn, Gioconda, burn..."
A silhouette advances,
a flash...
They lit the lighter
and set Gioconda on fire.
The flames painted Gioconda...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...h bullying, hatred, degradation among us,
And days of loathing and nights of fear
To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp,
Following the flag,
Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.
Now there's a flag over me in Spoon River!
A flag! A flag!...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...e hummocks. The Paraná stinks.
The Ottawa is light emerald green
Among grays. Better that the Indus fade
In steaming sands! Let the Brazos
Freeze solid! And the Wabash turn to a leaden
Cinder of ice! The Marañón is too tepid, we must
Find a way to freeze it hard. The Ural
Is freezing slowly in the blasts. The black Yonne
Congeals nicely. And the Petit-Morin
Curls up on the solid earth. The Inn
Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack's
Gal...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ould I cry to thee
To kiss thy Mavors, roll thy tender arms
Round him, and keep him from the lust of blood
That makes a steaming slaughter-house of Rome.

"Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant riot her
Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see
Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tempt
The Trojan, while his neatherds were abroad
Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept
Her deity false in human-amorous tears; 
Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter
Decided fairest. Rathe...Read more of this...



by Piercy, Marge
...at of few colors and little hair? 

This voluptuous seething heap of desires 
and fears, squeaking mice turned up 
in a steaming haystack with their babies? 

This coat has been handed down, an heirloom 
this coat of black hair and ample flesh,
this coat of pale slightly ruddy skin.

This set of hips and thighs, these buttocks 
they provided cushioning for my grandmother 
Hannah, for my mother Bert and for me 

and we all sat on them in turn, those major 
muscles on which...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...of partridge, or among
country beans, you light up
the meal and lend it
your virginal flavor.

Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads through
blue sierras.

But is there
no end
to your treasure?

In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the empty
table of the miner.

Your light, your cornmeal, your hope
pervades ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...like to take a corkscrew
and screw out all your brains
and you'd never be back ever."
And I close my eyes over the steaming
tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh." He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh."
Oh, my dear, not why....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ceaseless change 
Vary to our great Maker still new praise. 
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise 
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray, 
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, 
In honour to the world's great Author rise; 
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky, 
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers, 
Rising or falling still advance his praise. 
His praise, ye Winds, that from four quarters blow, 
Breathe soft or loud; and, wave you...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ing statue, fair and wan,
If tears should cease, to weep again;
And rare Arabian odors came,
Through the myrtle copses, steaming thence 
From the hissing frankincense,
Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,
Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome--
That ivory dome, whose azure night
With golden stars, like heaven, was bright
O'er the split cedar's pointed flame;
And the lady's harp would kindle there
The melody of an old air,
Softer than sleep; the villagers
Mixed their religio...Read more of this...

by Wyatt, Sir Thomas
...wellaway, the stranger bought full dear 
The fare she had. For as she looks, askance, 
Under a stool she spied two steaming eyes 
In a round head with sharp ears. In France 
was never mouse so feared, for though the unwise [afraid] 
Had not yseen such a beast before, 
Yet had nature taught her after her guise 
To know her foe and dread him evermore. 
The town mouse fled; she knew whither to go. 
The other had no shift, but wondrous sore 
Feared of her life, a...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the salted hay, 
Adrift along the winding shores, 
When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundelow 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, wh...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...s: 
See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port! 
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! 

Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west, 
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen, 
Wielding all day their axes!

Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels—thy oarsmen! 
Behold how the ash writhes under those muscular arms! 

There by the f...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...n calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring,
 preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

19See! steamers steaming through my poems! 
See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; 
See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s hut, the flatboat, the
 maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; 
See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they
 advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon th...Read more of this...

by Dove, Rita
...r> . ."
The Chateaubriand

arrived on a bone-white plate, smug and absolute
in its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming
like the heart plucked from the chest of a worthy enemy;
one touch with her fork sent pink juices streaming.

"Admiration for what?"Wine, a bloody
Pinot Noir, brought color to her cheeks."Why,
the aplomb with which we've managed
to support our Art"--meaning he'd convinced

her to pose nude for his appalling canvases,
faintly futuristic lands...Read more of this...

by Pastan, Linda
...ps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee....Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...e Passage

Man, I brisk in the galley first thing next dawn,
brewing li'l coffee; fog coil from the sea
like the kettle steaming when I put it down
slow, slow, 'cause I couldn't believe what I see:
where the horizon was one silver haze,
the fog swirl and swell into sails, so close
that I saw it was sails, my hair grip my skull,
it was horrors, but it was beautiful.
We float through a rustling forest of ships
with sails dry like paper, behind the glass
I saw men with rusty...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...l breath and being so inveigle me
That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be
Content, each new-born day, anew to see
The steaming crimson vintage of my youth
Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth?

Or hast Thou, Lord, somewhere I cannot see,
A lamb imprisoned in a bush for me?
Not so?Then let me render one by one
Thy gifts, while still they shine; some little sun
Yet gilds these thighs; my coat, albeit worn,
Still hold its colors fast; albeit torn.
My heart will laugh a litt...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...



SECOND ODE.

THOU go'st! I murmur--
Go! let me murmur.
Oh, worthy man,
Fly from this land!

Deadly marshes,
Steaming mists of October
Here interweave their currents,
Blending for ever.

Noisome insects
Here are engender'd;
Fatal darkness
Veils their malice.

The fiery-tongued serpent,
Hard by the sedgy bank,
Stretches his pamper'd body,
Caress'd by the sun's bright beams.

Tempt no gentle night-rambles
Under the moon's cold twilight!
Loathsome toads ho...Read more of this...

by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...ds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps on Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhatta steaming in sea-vines
the washed land awakes again to wilderness
the only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
a cry of seabirds high over
in empty eternity
as the Hudson retakes its thickets
and Indians reclaim their canoes...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs