Famous Water Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

A Lovers Complaint

...y sweet design,
And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath
That shall prefer and undertake my troth.'

'This said, his watery eyes he did dismount,
Whose sights till then were levell'd on my face;
Each cheek a river running from a fount
With brinish current downward flow'd apace:
O, how the channel to the stream gave grace!
Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses
That flame through water which their hue encloses.

'O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...ed face, 
To him the hereditary countenance bequeath’d, both mother’s and father’s, 
His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees, 
Built of the common stock, having room for far and near, 
Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,
Attracting it Body and Soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, 
Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits, 
Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him, 
Mak...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Beowulf (Modern English)

...of men, relating from long before.
He told that the Almighty made the earth,
a shining-bright plain, so surrounded by waters.
He established both sun and moon, victorious and triumphant,
the lamps of light for those living on land,
and ornamented all the corners of the earth
with limbs and leaves—he also shaped life itself
in all kinds of creatures which quickly scurry about. (ll. 86-98)

So these noble warriors lodged in their delights
blissfully — until their lone...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Howl

...chinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy ...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Hyperion

...g light
Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans
They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar
Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,
Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.
Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd
Ever as if just rising from a sleep,
Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;
And thus in thousand hugest phantasies
Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe.
Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon,
Couches of rugged stone, ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Inferno (English)

...e the unspoken thought - "is none 
 Beneath God's wrath who dies in field or town, 
 Or earth's wide space, or whom the waters drown, 
 But here he cometh at last, and that so spurred 
 By Justice, that his fear, as those ye heard, 
 Impels him forward like desire. Is not 
 One spirit of all to reach the fatal spot 
 That God's love holdeth, and hence, if Char 
 chide, 
 Ye well may take it. - Raise thy heart, for now, 
 Constrained of Heaven, he must thy course allow." 

 Ye...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Last night I had a dream

...un through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali....Read more of this...
by Ali, Muhammad

Poem of Joys

...t! 
O to continue and be employ’d there all my life!
O the briny and damp smell—the shore—the salt weeds exposed at low water, 
The work of fishermen—the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher. 

O it is I! 
I come with my clam-rake and spade! I come with my eel-spear; 
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them—I joke at my work, like a mettlesome young man. 

In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Snow

...above it,
Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?
Their bulk in water would be frozen rock
In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow
They will come budding boughs from tree to tree
Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee,
As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm.”

“But why when no one wants you to go on?
Your wife—she doesn’t want you to. We don’t,
And you yourself don’t want to. Who else is there?”

“Save ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Song of Myself

...the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, 
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him, 
And brought water, and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d
 feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse
 clean clothes, 
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, 
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; 
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d nort...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...by man.

Seven spears, and the seventh
Was wrought as the faerie blades,
And given to Elf the minstrel
By the monstrous water-maids;

By them that dwell where luridly
Lost waters of the Rhine
Move among roots of nations,
Being sunken for a sign.

Under all graves they murmur,
They murmur and rebel,
Down to the buried kingdoms creep,
And like a lost rain roar and weep
O'er the red heavens of hell.

Thrice drowned was Elf the minstrel,
And washed as dead on sand;
And the third ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Growth of Love

...s by angels kisst
In pictures seen leaving their marble cist
To go before the throne of grace unblamed. 
Nor surer am I water hath the skill
To quench my thirst, or that my strength is freed
In delicate ordination as I will,
Than that to be myself is all I need
For thee to be most mine: so I stand still,
And save to taste my joy no more take heed. 

3
The whole world now is but the minister
Of thee to me: I see no other scheme
But universal love, from timeless dream
Waking to...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Idiot Boy

...nbsp; Or in the castle he's pursuing,  Among the ghosts, his own undoing;  Or playing with the waterfall,"   At poor old Susan then she railed,  While to the town she posts away;  "If Susan had not been so ill,  Alas! I should have had him still,  My Johnny, till my dying day."   Poor Betty! in this sad distemper,  The doctor's self would hardly spare,  Unwor...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Lady of the Lake

...grant balm;
     The aspens slept beneath the calm;
     The silver light, with quivering glance,
     Played on the water's still expanse,—
     Wild were the heart whose passion's sway
     Could rage beneath the sober ray!
     He felt its calm, that warrior guest,
     While thus he communed with his breast:—
     'Why is it, at each turn I trace
     Some memory of that exiled race?
     Can I not mountain maiden spy,
     But she must bear the Douglas eye?
 ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...city.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. 

The cut worm forgives the plow.

Dip him in the river who loves water.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. 
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no
clock can measure.

All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number we...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Three Voices

...fact, with skill uncouth
And savage rapture, like a tooth
She wrenched some slow reluctant truth. 

Till, like a silent water-mill,
When summer suns have dried the rill,
She reached a full stop, and was still. 

Dead calm succeeded to the fuss,
As when the loaded omnibus
Has reached the railway terminus: 

When, for the tumult of the street,
Is heard the engine's stifled beat,
The velvet tread of porters' feet. 

With glance that ever sought the ground,
She moved her lips wit...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Triumph of Life

...Under a mountain which from unknown time
"Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
And from it came a gentle rivulet
Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
"Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sound which all who hear must needs forget
"All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
Which they had known before that hour of rest:
A sleeping mother then would dream not of
"The only child who died upon her breast
At eve...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Waste Land

...n images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 
 Frisch weht der Wind
 Der Heimat zu
 Mein Irisch Kind,
 Wo weilest du?
"You gave...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Three Women

...kin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images. They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched. They are walkers of air.

Can not...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

White Flock

...x

God is unkind to gardeners and reapers.
Slanted rain coils and falls from up high
And the wide raincoats catch water,
That once had reflected the sky.

In underwater realm are fields and meadows
And the free currents sing a lot,
Plums rupture on bloated branches
And grass strands, lying down, rot.

And through the dense and watery net
I see your darling face,
A quiet park, a round porch
And a Chinese arbour-place.



x x x

All promised him to me:
...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Water poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Get more exposure for your poetry and more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Reflection on the Important Things

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
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Hide Ad