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Famous Surges Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Hugo, Victor
...cipitated, 
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red 
Into the furnace stirred to fume, 
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, 
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire 
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume. 

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, 
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil? 
With love that has not speech for need! 
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: 
I...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...Sense.
Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
Hear how Timotheus' vary'd Lays surprize,
And bid Alternate Passi...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...wave yet ripples o'er in vain: 
But where is he who wore? 
Ye! who would o'er his relics weep, 
Go, seek them where the surges sweep 
Their burthen round Sig?um's steep, 
And cast on Lemnos' shore: 
The sea-birds shriek above the prey, 
O'er which their hungry beaks delay, 
As shaken on his restless pillow, 
His head heaves with the heaving billow; 
That hand, whose motion is not life, 
Yet feebly seems to menace strife, 
Flung by the tossing tide on high, 
Then levell'd with...Read more of this...

by Desnos, Robert
...peacock's fan
Like the mist around the shaft and knot less feathers
Of a comet come to nest at midnight.

How blood surges from the gaping wound,
Lips already silencing murmur and cry.
One solemn finger holds back time, confusing
The witness of the eyes where the deed is written.

Silence? We still know the passwords.
Lost sentinels far from the watch fires
We smell the odor of honeysuckle and surf
Rising in the dark shadows.

Distance, let dawn leap the v...Read more of this...

by Fu, Du
...sand, birds circle round. Endlessly, trees shed leaves, rustling, rustling down, Without cease, the great river surges, surges on. Ten thousand miles in sorrowful autumn, always someone's guest, A hundred years full of sickness, I climb the terrace alone. Suffering troubles, I bitterly regret my whitening temples, Frustratingly I've had to abandon my cup of cloudy wine....Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...sing fit
Against that hell-born Circe. The crew had gone,
By one and one, to pale oblivion;
And I was gazing on the surges prone,
With many a scalding tear and many a groan,
When at my feet emerg'd an old man's hand,
Grasping this scroll, and this same slender wand.
I knelt with pain--reached out my hand--had grasp'd
These treasures--touch'd the knuckles--they unclasp'd--
I caught a finger: but the downward weight
O'erpowered me--it sank. Then 'gan abate
The storm...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...ep,
Seamen that fare for them
Forth, with a prayer for them:
Shall not God care for them
Angels not keep?
Spare not the surges
Thy stormy scourges;
Spare us the dirges
Of wives that weep.
Turn back the waves for us:
Dig no fresh graves for us,
Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep.

O stout north-easter,
Sea-king, land-waster,
For all thine haste, or
Thy stormy skill,
Yet hadst thou never,
For all endeavour,
Strength to dissever
Or strength to spill,
Save of his giv...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...n, by realms of rushing gloom,
Were seer and phantom sundered. 

Then swept some timbers from a wreck,
On following surges riding;
Then sea-weed, in the turbid rack
Uptorn, went slowly gliding. 
The horrid shade, by slow degrees,
A beam of light defeated,
And then the roar of raving seas,
Fast, far, and faint, retreated. 

And all was gone­gone like a mist,
Corse, billows, tempest, wreck;
Three children close to Gilbert prest
And clung around his neck.
Good ni...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...ar the Trent.
The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away;
The Rubicon is merely a brook.
In winter the Main
Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.
The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks
And the Rio Grande spins tales of the past.
The Loir bursts its frozen shackles
But the Moldau's wet mud ensnares it.
The East catches the light.
Near the Escaut the noise of factories echoes
And the sinuous Humboldt gurgles wildly.
The Po too flows, and...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...e above your life. See 
how the grass mirrors fire, how 
a wind rides up the hillside 
steadily toward you until it surges 
into your ears like breath coming 
and going, released from its bondage 
to blood or speech and denying nothing....Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...a wider Sea, 
But never to return, or cast an Anchor more! 
Some on the Northern Coasts are thrown, 
And by congealing Surges compass'd round, 
To fixt and certain Ruin bound, 
Immoveable are grown:
The fatal Goodwin swallows All that come 
Within the Limits of that dangerous Sand, 
Amphibious in its kind, nor Sea nor Land; 
Yet kin to both, a false and faithless Strand, 
Known only to our Cost for a devouring Tomb. 
Nor seemed the HURRICANE content, 
Whilst only Ships w...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...descends on the Atlantic 
The gigantic 
Storm-wind of the equinox  
Landward in his wrath he scourges 
The toiling surges 5 
Laden with seaweed from the rocks: 

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges 
Of sunken ledges  
In some far-off bright Azore; 
From Bahama and the dashing 10 
Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador; 

From the tumbling surf that buries 
The Orkneyan skerries  
Answering the hoarse Hebrides; 15 
And from wrecks of ships and drifting 
Spars ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions f...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...wave yet ripples o'er in vain: 
But where is he who wore? 
Ye! who would o'er his relics weep, 
Go, seek them where the surges sweep 
Their burthen round Sig?um's steep, 
And cast on Lemnos' shore: 
The sea-birds shriek above the prey, 
O'er which their hungry beaks delay, 
As shaken on his restless pillow, 
His head heaves with the heaving billow; 
That hand, whose motion is not life, 
Yet feebly seems to menace strife, 
Flung by the tossing tide on high, 
Then levell'd with...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...YOU are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; 
But all the sea of sadness in my blood 
Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose, 
Salt with the memory of the bitter flood. 

In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, 
That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate 
By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more 
Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. 

It is a ruin where the jackals rest, 
And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...
No song when the spirit is mute¡ª 
No song but sad dirges  
Like the wind through a ruin'd cell  
Or the mournful surges 15 
That ring the dead seaman's knell. 

When hearts have once mingl'd  
Love first leaves the well-built nest; 
The weak one is singl'd 
To endure what it once possesst. 20 
O Love! who bewailest 
The frailty of all things here  
Why choose you the frailest 
For your cradle your home and your bier? 

Its passions will rock thee 25...Read more of this...

by Russell, George William
...spiral pathways flowing.


It was a crystal boat that chased
The light along the watery waste,
Till caught amid the surges hoary
The Pilot stayed its jewelled glory.


Oh, never such a glory was:
The pale moon shot it through and through
With light of lilac, white and blue:
And there mid many a fairy hue,
Of pearl and pink and amethyst,
Like lightning ran the rainbow gleams
And wove around a wonder-mist.


The Pilot lifted beckoning hands;
Silent I went with deep ...Read more of this...

by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
To the southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb,
Only the crag and the cliff to nor'ward,
And rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
And waifs wreck'd seaward and wasted shoreward
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

A grim grey coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men --
Where the batter'd hull and the broken ma...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...languor nor fatigue: an endless feast,
An endless war.

 The hundred years had ceased;
I stood upon the stair: the surges bore
A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore,
Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn
Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin
Outcry of bats.

 And then young Niamh came
Holding that horse, and sadly called my name;
I mounted, and we passed over the lone
And drifting greyness, while this monotone,
Surly and distant, mixed insepara...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...ge turning and turning go,
As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak,
I rode away on the surges, where, high aS the saddle-bow,
Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.

Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,
Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,
When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,
For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gate...Read more of this...

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