Famous Swimming Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Swimming poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous swimming poems. These examples illustrate what a famous swimming poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Yeats, William Butler
...host,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And knowing that the future would be vexed
With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,
preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbour or friend,
Among dark skins, and there
permit foul years to wear
Hidden from eyesight to the unnot...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...lk;
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in summer visible through the
clear
waters, the great trout swimming;
In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating
slowly,
high
beyond the tree tops,
Below, the red cedar, festoon’d with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing
out
of the
white sand that spreads far and flat;
Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with color’d
flowers
and
...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...ddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.
Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...unterfeit, you think,
The burden of it in a thousand ways;
But as the bitterness that loads your tears
Makes Dead Sea swimming easy, so the gloom,
The penance, and the woeful pride you keep,
Make bitterness your buoyance of the world.
And at the fairest and the frenziedest
Alike of your God-fearing festivals,
You so compound the truth to pamper fear
That in the doubtful surfeit of your faith
You clamor for the food that shadows eat.
You call it rapture or deli...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...at our feet the water-snakes will curl
In all their amethystine panoply
Of diamonded mail, and we will mark
The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark,
Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold
Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep
His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold,
And we will see the painted dolphins sleep
Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks
Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous
flocks.
And tremulous opa...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...y jet surpass
For tenderness the arms so idly lain
Amongst them? Feelest not a kindred pain,
To see such lovely eyes in swimming search
After some warm delight, that seems to perch
Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond
Their upper lids?--Hist! "O for Hermes' wand
To touch this flower into human shape!
That woodland Hyacinthus could escape
From his green prison, and here kneeling down
Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown!
Ah me, how I could love!--My soul doth melt
...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ndness such as yours.'
And Philip ask'd
`Then you will let me, Annie?'
There she turn'd,
She rose, and fixt her swimming eyes upon him,
And dwelt a moment on his kindly face,
Then calling down a blessing on his head
Caught at his hand and wrung it passionately,
And past into the little garth beyond.
So lifted up in spirit he moved away.
Then Philip put the boy and girl to school,
And bought them needful books, and everyway,
Like one who does his duty by his ...Read more of this...
by
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...s!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the in...Read more of this...
by
Giovanni, Nikki
...t written a poem in so long i may have forgotten how unless writing a poem is like riding a bike or swimming upstream or loving you it may be a habit that once aquired is never lost but you say i'm foolish of course you love me but being loved of course is not the same as being loved because or being loved despite or being loved if you love me why do i feel so lonely and why do i alw...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...he mountain in back of the
lake promised us eternity, but the lake itself was filled with
thousands of silly minnows, swimming close to the shore
and busy putting in hours of Mack Sennett time.
The minnows were an Idaho tourist attraction. They
should have been made into a National Monument. Swimming
close to shore, like children they believed in their own im-
mortality .
A third-year student in engineering at the University of
Montana attempted to ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...r purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d,
Thou, rondure of the world, at last accomplish’d.
6
O, vast Rondure, swimming in space!
Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty!
Alternate light and day, and the teeming, spiritual darkness;
Unspeakable, high processions of sun and moon, and countless stars, above;
Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees;
With inscrutable purpose—some hidden, prophetic intention;
Now, first, it seems, my th...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ng more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices,
eternal
uses of the earth.
13
O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore!
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep—to race naked along the shore.
O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all—that there are no bounds;
To emerge, and be of the sky—of the sun and moon, and the flying clouds, as one with
them.
O the joy of a manly self-hood!
Personality—to be servile to non...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...hoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
10
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer, swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head—he strikes out with courageous
arms—he
urges himself with his legs,
I see his white body—I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks.
What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will yo...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...r dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--
I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the da...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...I have even heard it disputed on the spot; and not foreseeing a speedy conclusion to the controversy, amused myself by swimming across it in the meantime, and probably may again, before the point is settled. Indeed, the question as to the truth of "the tale of Troy divine" still continues, much of it resting upon the word {'?peiros} [in Greek]: probably Homer had the same notion of distance that a coquette has of time, and when he talks of the boundless, means half a mil...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ne on them, so the gossips said.
Charlotta felt a lightness in her head.
When the next act began, her eyes were swimming,
Her prodded ears were aching and confused.
The first notes from the orchestra sent skimming
Her outward consciousness. Her brain was fused
Into the music, Theodore's music! Used
To hear him play, she caught his single tone.
For all she noticed they two were alone.
Part Fourth
Frau Altgelt waited in the chilly street,
Hustled by lac...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...each leg were a gun
loaded with leaps but not fired while your neck
holds your head still listening: as when
while swimming in some isolated place
a girl hears leaves rustle and turns to look:
the forest pool reflected in her face....Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...lood like this?
Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal—
My brain unfolding! There you'll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window,
Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . .
Sometimes my wife comes there to speak to me . . .
Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . .
Goldfish swim in a bow...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...t the churchyard gate?
The messenger of fear and fate!
Haste in his hurried accent lies,
And grief is swimming in his eyes.
All dripping from the recent flood,
Panting and travel-soiled he stood,
The fatal sign of fire and sword
Held forth, and spoke the appointed word:
'The muster-place is Lanrick mead;
Speed forth the signal! Norman, speed!'
And must he change so soon the hand
Just linked to his by holy band,...Read more of this...
by
Silverstein, Shel
...ed and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow talle?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tear...Read more of this...
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