Famous The Ocean Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous The Ocean poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous the ocean poems. These examples illustrate what a famous the ocean poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Philip Levine
Torn into light, you woke wriggling
on a woman's palm. Halved, quartered,
shredded to the wind, you were the life
that thrilled along the underbelly
of a stone. Stilled in the frozen pond
you rinsed heaven with a sigh.
How much earth is a man.
A wall fies down and roses
rush from its teeth; in the fists
of...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
I
It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour.
II
Only with speeches fair
She woo'd the gentle Air
To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("J'étais seul près des flots.")
{XXXVII., September 5, 1828.}
I stood by the waves, while the stars soared in sight,
Not a cloud specked the sky, not a sail shimmered bright;
Scenes beyond this dim world were revealed to mine eye;
And the woods, and the hills, and all nature around,
Seem'd...Read more of this...
by
Nayyirah Waheed
you broke the ocean in
half to be here
only to find nothing that wants you...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song!
All the gulls are out, delighting
In a wild, uncharted quest
See the first red sunshine smiting
Silver sheen of wing and breast!
Ho, the sunrise rainbow-hearted
Steals athwart the misty brine,
And the sky where clouds have parted
Is a bowl of amber wine!
Sweet, its...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
In love’s great ocean, whose calm-shelter’d shore
Must he for ever leave, whose soul is bound
On farthest quest, life’s wonders to explore—
That mightiest flood, all-whelming, torment-toss’d,
Wherein must ev’ry lover’s self be lost
Ere the Belovéd’s lovelier self be found—
Think not, O searcher, in that sea to find
Food for thine earth-born strength & lustful show,
Nor glorious pearl to deck thy worldly mind,
Nor isle...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
Where are the hapless shipmen?—disappeared,
Gone down, where witness none, save Night, hath been,
Ye deep, deep waves, of kneeling mothers feared,
What dismal tales know ye of things unseen?
Tales that ye tell your whispering selves between
The while in clouds to the flood-tide ye pour;
And this it is that gives...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this --
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.
"Tell her this
And more --
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Unhappy about some far off things
That are not my affair, wandering
Along the coast and up the lean ridges,
I saw in the evening
The stars go over the lonely ocean,
And a black-maned wild boar
Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.
The old monster snuffled, "Here are sweet roots,
Fat grubs, slick beetles and sprouted acorns.
The best nation in Europe has fallen,
And that...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
OUT of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.
2
(Now we have met, we have...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
It is half winter, half spring,
and Barbara and I are standing
confronting the ocean.
Its mouth is open very wide,
and it has dug up its green,
throwing it, throwing it at the shore.
You say it is angry.
I say it is like a kicked Madonna.
Its womb collapses, drunk with its fever.
We breathe in its fury.
I, the inlander,
am here with you for just a...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
The continent's a tamed ox, with all its mountains,
Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here is
for park and playground, this helpless
Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel
All docile between this ocean and the other. If
flood troubles the lowlands, or earthquake
Cracks walls, it is only a slave's blunder or the
natural
Shudder of a new made...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
Let us rest ourselves a bit!
Worry?-- wave your hand to it --
Kiss your finger-tips and smile
It farewell a little while.
Weary of the weary way
We have come from Yesterday,
Let us fret not, instead,
Of the wary way ahead.
Let us pause and catch our breath
On the hither side of death,
While we see the tender...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Campbell
When first the fiery-mantled sun
His heavenly race begun to run;
Round the earth and ocean blue,
His children four the Seasons flew.
First, in green apparel dancing,
The young Spring smiled with angel grace;
Rosy summer next advancing,
Rushed into her sire's embrace:-
Her blue-haired sire, who bade her keep
For ever nearest to his smile,
On Calpe's...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
Down by the banks of the river we go.
Here is a mill with the humming of thunder,
Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running under--...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
Phoebus make haste, the day's too long, be gone,
The silent night's the fittest time for moan;
But stay this once, unto my suit give ear,
And tell my griefs in either hemisphere.
(And if the whirling of thy wheels don't drown'd)
The woeful accents of my doleful sound,
If in thy swift carrier thou canst make stay,
I...Read more of this...
by
Joaquin Miller
Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep.
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
The west is banked against the west.
Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten thousand foresters are told.
And all so still! so still the air
That...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
II
No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms,
hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.
No more sailing from harbor to harbor with this my weather-beaten boat.
The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.
And now I am eager to die into the deathless.
Into the audience...Read more of this...
by
Robert Lowell
Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
in broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine,
abandoned, almost Dionysian.
At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street,
blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five days' white.
All night I've held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad--
its hackneyed...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
And wilt thou, faithless one, then, leave me,
With all thy magic phantasy,--
With all the thoughts that joy or grieve me,
Wilt thou with all forever fly?
Can naught delay thine onward motion,
Thou golden time of life's young dream?
In vain! eternity's wide ocean
Ceaselessly drowns thy rolling stream.
The glorious suns my youth enchanting
Have set in never-ending night;
Those blest ideals now are wanting
That swelled...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA VII. Non ha tanti animali il mar fra l' onde. HE DESPAIRS OF ESCAPE FROM THE TORMENTS BY WHICH HE IS SURROUNDED. Nor Ocean holds such swarms amid his waves,Not overhead, where circles the pale moon,Were stars so numerous ever seen by night,Nor dwell so many birds among the woods,Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Turner Smith
Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,
Night on the ocean settles dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone
Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell
The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone
Singing the hour, and bidding "Strike...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
WHAT flower is this that greets the morn,
Its hues from Heaven so freshly born?
With burning star and flaming band
It kindles all the sunset land:
Oh tell us what its name may be,--
Is this the Flower of Liberty?
It is the banner of the free,
The starry Flower of Liberty!
In savage Nature's far abode
Its tender seed our fathers sowed;
The storm-winds rocked its...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For My Mother)
The fragile splendour of the level sea,
The moon's serene and silver-veiled face,
Make of this vessel an enchanted place
Full of white mirth and golden sorcery.
Now, for a time, shall careless laughter be
Blended with song, to lend song sweeter grace,
And the old stars, in their unending race,
Shall heed and envy young humanity.
And yet to-night, a hundred leagues away,
These waters...Read more of this...
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