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Famous Submerged Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...we swam until we couldn't. 
Then it felt like sleep, the taste of nectar 

still inside us. Sometimes a flower 

became submerged with us. A million years 
went by. A hundred. Swarm of hoverflies, 
cockroach, assassin bug, all 

trapped, suspended 

in that moment of fullness, 
a Pompeii, the mother 

covering her child's head forever....Read more of this...
by Flynn, Nick



...-half of them had got ashore,
The women and children were in a state of uproar,
Because the forepart of the Steamer was submerged in the Tay,
Which filled the passengers' hearts with dismay. 

But, thanks be to God! all the passengers were sent to Dundee
By the Steamers Renown, Forfarshire, Protector, and the Lass o' Gowrie,
Which certainly was a most beautiful sight to see,
When they landed 900 passengers safe on the pier at Dundee. 

Then, good people, away to the mountains...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...de,

an intimacy I have sought

With no other.



My greatest fear is that you might

Have changed beyond recognition.

Submerged in trivia and the

Minutiae of the quotidian.



At ten my adoration of you was total,

At fifty-four it is somewhat greater:

I place you among the angels and madonnas

Of the quattrocento, Raphael and Masaccio

And Petrarch’s sonnets to Laura.





13



Summoning the ghosts of the dead

I do not dream of Caesar

But of you Uncle Arthur

In your ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...ard between my fingers, 
a small black angel. 
O Mary, permit me this grace, 
this crossing over, 
although I am ugly, 
submerged in my own past 
and my own madness. 
Although there are chairs 
I lie on the floor. 
Only my hands are alive, 
touching beads. 
Word for word, I stumble. 
A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine. 

I count beads as waves, 
hammering in upon me. 
I am ill at their numbers, 
sick, sick in the summer heat 
and the window above me 
is my only listener...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...field with shallow, blanching light. 
The huddled sentry stares 
On gloom at war with white, 
And white receding slow, submerged in gloom.
Guns into mimic thunder burst and boom, 
And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night. 
The sentry keeps his watch where no one stirs 
But the brown rats, the nimble scavengers....Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried



.... 
You cannot lift yourself to its rim 
And see the outer world of things, 
And at the same time see yourself. 
You are submerged in the tub of yourself — 
Taboos and rules and appearances, 
Are the staves of your tub. 
Break them and dispel the witchcraft 
Of thinking your tub is life! 
And that you know life!...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee
...side,

An intimacy I have sought

With no other.

My greatest fear is that you might

Have changed beyond recognition,

Submerged in trivia and the

Minutiae of the quotidian.

At ten my adoration of you was total.

At sixty it’s somewhat greater:

I place you among the angels and madonnas

Of the quattrocento, Raphael and Masaccio

And Petrarch’s sonnets to Laura....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...er, 
The same Undying Soul of Earth’s, activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s Expression, 
Out from her evolutions hither come—submerged the strata of her former themes, 
Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s—foundation of to-day’s; 
Ended, deceas’d, through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain;
Silent through time the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt—silent those century-baffling tombs;

Closed for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors; 
Calliope’s call for ever closed—Clio, M...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock's eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening ed...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...lank, rising and slumping from a sea 
201 Of hardy foam, receding flatly, spread 
202 In endless ledges, glittering, submerged 
203 And cold in a boreal mistiness of the moon. 
204 The spring came there in clinking pannicles 
205 Of half-dissolving frost, the summer came, 
206 If ever, whisked and wet, not ripening, 
207 Before the winter's vacancy returned. 
208 The myrtle, if the myrtle ever bloomed, 
209 Was like a glacial pink upon the air. 
210 The green palme...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...nd shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
 The barnacles which encrust the side
 of the wave, cannot hide
 there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
 glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
 into the crevices—
 in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
 of bodies. The water drives a wedge
 of iron throught the iron edge
 of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
 bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
 lilies, and submarine
 toads...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne
...d nations 
the light was generalised there 
from vague glass places in the trees 
and the colours were moist and zinc, 
submerged and weathered and lichen 
with black aisles and white poplar blues. 

The only yellow at all 
was tight curls of fresh butter 
as served on stainless steel 
in a postwar cafe: cassia flowers, 
soft crystal with caraway-dipped tongues, 
butter mountains of cassia flowers 
on green, still dewed with water....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les
...t, under the heavy burden
Of their dreams, their jaws move,
Chewing a non-existant turnip.
'Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people,
Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone,
Haven't usurped anyone's bread.
No one died in my place. No one.
Go back into your mist.
It's not my fault if I live and breathe,
Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.'...Read more of this...
by Levi, Primo
...illness of the water--
Something blank & unresponsive in its tough,
Pimpled skin--seen only a moment, then unseen
As it submerged to rest on mud, or glided just
Beneath the lustreless, calm yellow leaves
That clustered along a log, or floated there
In broken ringlets, held by a gray froth
On the opaque, unbroken surface of the pond,
Which reflected nothing, no one.
 And then I remembered.
When I was a child, our neighbors would disappear.
And there wasn't a pond of crocodiles...Read more of this...
by Levis, Larry
...o the heavens above,
Praying to God for succour with her heart full of love. 

At last the Columbine began to strike on submerged rocks,
And with the rise and fall of the sea she received some dreadful shocks,
And notwithstanding that the vessel was still rolling among the rocks,
Still the noble heroine contrived once more to raise herself upon the box. 

Still the Columbine sped on, and ran upon a shingly beach,
And at last the Island of Lepsoe, Miss Mouat did reach,
And she...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...kes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags alo...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry