Famous Swamp Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain

...lesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds 

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Jim


A poem on the rising glory of America

...o fell, 
His soul too gen'rous, for that dastard crew 
Who kill unseen and shun the face of day. 
Ambush'd in wood, and swamp and thick grown hill, 
The bellowing tribes brought on the savage war. 
What could avail O Braddock then the flame, 
The gen'rous flame which fir'd thy martial soul! 
What could avail Britannia's warlike troops, 
Choice spirits of her isle? What could avail 
America's own sons? The skulking foe, 
Hid in the forest lay and sought secure, 
What could the...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry

A Tale of Two Cities

...ked away
 Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
 Made impure,
By the Sunderbunds unwholesome, by the swamp
 Moist and damp;
And the City and the Viceroy, as we see,
 Don't agree.
Once, two hundered years ago, the trader came
 Meek and tame.
Where his timid foot first halted, there he stayed,
 Till mere trade
Grew to Empire, and he sent his armies forth
 South and North
Till the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
 Was his own.
Thus the midday halt of Charnock -...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

American Feuillage

...unwale,
 smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal
 Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the
 cypress
 tree,
 and the juniper tree; 
—Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion
 returning
 home at
 evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; 
Children at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (ho...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...ck, live-oak, locust,
 chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia, 
Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp, 
He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice,
Off him pasturage, sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, 
Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird,
 night-heron, and eagle; 
His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil, 
Surrounding ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


Beowulf (Modern English)

...the fiend from hell.
That ferocious spirit was named Grendel,
the notorious border-strider, who held the moors,
the swampy stronghold, the lair of water-monsters,
an unhappy creature, keeping them a long while,
since the Shaper had condemned him
as the kin of Cain—that killing had the Eternal Lord
avenged, after the man had struck down Abel.
Cain rejoiced not in that felony, but he banished him far away,
the Measurer for those wicked deeds, from the kindred of men.
...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Daybreak In Alabama

...rite me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow ha...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Langston

Dreamland

...ows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

Endymion: Book II

...habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the bosom of a hated thing.

 What misery most drowningly doth sing
In lone Endymion's ear, now he has caught
The goal of consciousness? Ah, 'tis the thought,
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd,
The cloudy rack...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Four Songs Of Four Seasons

...rled together
At either hand,
Like weeds uplifted,
The tree-trunks rifted
In spars are drifted,
Like foam or sand,
Past swamp and sallow
And reed-beds callow,
Through pool and shallow,
To wind and lee,
Till, no more tongue-tied,
Full flood and young tide
Roar down the rapids and storm the sea.

As men's cheeks faded
On shores invaded,
When shorewards waded
The lords of fight;
When churl and craven
Saw hard on haven
The wide-winged raven
At mainmast height;
When monks affright...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Gertrude of Wyoming

...journey's plan
In woods required, whose trained eye was keen,
As eagle of the wilderness, to scan
His path by mountain, swamp, or deep ravine,
Or ken far friendly huts on good savannas green.

Old Albert saw him from the valley's side--
His pirogue launch'd--his pilgrimage begun--
Far, like the red-bird's wing he seem'd to glide;
Then dived, and vanish'd in the woodlands dun.
Oft, to that spot by tender memory won,
Would Albert climb the promontory's height,
If but a dim sail...Read more of this...
by Campbell, Thomas

Inferno (English)

...ease by turning. And the while 
 Above them roams and ravens the loathsome hound 
 Cerberus, and feeds upon them. 
 The swampy ground 
 He ranges; with his long clawed hands he grips 
 The sinners, and the fierce and hairy lips 
 (Thrice-headed is he) tear, and the red blood drips 
 From all his jaws. He clutches, and flays, and rends, 
 And treads them, growling: and the flood descends 
 Straight downward. 
 When he saw us, the loathly worm 
 Showed all his fangs, and eager ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Monadnoc

...ave old mould is broke,
And end in clowns the mountain-folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,—
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!

Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men;—
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

On Love

...What hangs the sun on high? 
What swells the growing rye? 
What bids the loons cry on the Northern lake? 
What stirs in swamp and swale, 
When April winds prevail, 
And all the dwellers of the ground awake?… 

What lurks in the deep gaze 
Of the old wolf? Amaze, 
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear. 
But deeper than all these 
Love muses, yearns, and sees, 
And is the self that does not change nor veer. 

Not love of self alone, 
Struggle for lair and bone, 
But self-den...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss

Starting from Paumanok

...ied the mocking-bird’s tones, and the mountainhawk’s, 
And heard at dusk the unrival’d one, the hermit thrush from the
 swamp-cedars, 
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World. 

2Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, 
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. 

This, then, is life; 
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions. 

How curious! how real!
Underfoot the divine...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Creation

...d.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from mak...Read more of this...
by Johnson, James Weldon

The Holy Grail

...ed years of death, 
Sprang into fire: and at the base we found 
On either hand, as far as eye could see, 
A great black swamp and of an evil smell, 
Part black, part whitened with the bones of men, 
Not to be crost, save that some ancient king 
Had built a way, where, linked with many a bridge, 
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea. 
And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge, 
And every bridge as quickly as he crost 
Sprang into fire and vanished, though I yearned 
To f...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Lady of the Lake

...coil
     The sullen margin of Loch Voil,
     Waked still Loch Doine, and to the source
     Alarmed, Balvaig, thy swampy course;
     Thence southward turned its rapid road
     Adown Strath-Gartney's valley broad
     Till rose in arms each man might claim
     A portion in Clan-Alpine's name,
     From the gray sire, whose trembling hand
     Could hardly buckle on his brand,
     To the raw boy, whose shaft and bow
     Were yet scarce terror to the crow.
  ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Last Tournament

...the drunkard, as he stretched from horse 
To strike him, overbalancing his bulk, 
Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp 
Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave, 
Heard in dead night along that table-shore, 
Drops flat, and after the great waters break 
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, 
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, 
From less and less to nothing; thus he fell 
Head-heavy; then the knights, who watched him, roared 
And shouted and lea...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

V

...ubstantial up the flue.

Listening to Lulu, in our hearth we burn,
As we hear the high Cs rise in stereo,
what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern
at least 300 million years ago.

Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D
lifted from a source that bears your name,
the one we hear decay, the one we see,
the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.

This world, with far too many people in,
starts on the TV logo as a taw,
then ping-pong, tennis, football; then one spin
to sho...Read more of this...
by Harrison, Tony

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Swamp poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Get more exposure for your poetry and more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry

Member Area

My Admin
Profile and Settings
Edit My Poems
Edit My Quotes
Edit My Short Stories
Edit My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder

Soup Social

Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us

Member Poems

Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread

Member Poets

Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest

Famous Poems

Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Famous Poets

Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War

Poetry Resources

Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter