Famous Whalers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Of Politics and Art

...a great herd of whales
Where all the females floated on their sides
While their young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers
Just stared into what they allowed
Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow's
One visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.

Today I listened to a woman say
That Melville might
Be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked, "And why not?"
The first responded, "Because there are
No women in his one novel."

And Mrs. Whitimore...Read more of this...
by Dubie, Norman


Pretty Halcyon Days

...ll swim in it.

How pleasant to gaze at the sailors
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vikings and whalers
In the days of the vikings and whale.
 They sport on the brink
 Of the shad and the shark;
 If it’s windy, they sink;
 If it isn’t, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.

How pleasant the salt anesthetic
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventur...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

Song of the Broad-Axe

...nd
 fun,

Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river—dwellers on coasts and off
 coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. 

The shapes arise! 
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets; 
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads; 
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of barges, towns, lake and canal craft, river craft. 

The shapes arise! 
Ship-yards and d...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Coastwise Lights

...ssed the Isle o' Ghosts!

And north, amid the hummocks,
 A biscuit-toss below,
We met the silent shallop
 That frighted whalers know;
For, down a cruel ice-lane,
 That opened as he sped,
We saw dead Henry Hudson
 Steer, North by West, his dead.

So dealt God's waters with us
 Beneath the roaring skies,
So walked His signs and marvels
 All naked to our eyes:
But we were heading homeward
 With trade to lose or make --
Good Lord, they slipped behind us
 In the tailing of our wak...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The English Flag

...gland? Winds of the World, declare!

The North Wind blew: -- "From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go;
I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
And the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.

"I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
And they die...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


The Merchantmen

...d the Isle of Ghosts! 

 And north, amid the hummocks,
 A biscuit-toss below,
 We met the silent shallop
 That frighted whalers know;
 For, down a cruel ice-lane,
 That opened as he sped,
 We saw dead Hendrick Hudson
 Steer, North by West, his dead.

 So dealt God's waters with us
 Beneath the roaring skies,
 So walked His signs and marrvels
 All naked to our eyes:
 But we were heading homeward
 With trade to lose or make --
 Good Lord, they slipped behind us
 In the tailing ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

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