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Famous Wharves Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...ven-clouds canopy my city with a
 delicate thin haze; 
When, gorgeous, the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with
 colors;

When every ship, richly drest, carries her flag at the peak;
When pennants trail, and street-festoons hang from the windows; 
When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers—when the mass is
 densest;

When the façades of the houses are alive with people—when eyes gaze, riveted, tens of
 thousands
 at ...Read more of this...



by Neruda, Pablo
...>

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., the cotton-field, the *****-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen
 before
 rude
 carts—cotton bales piled on banks and wharves; 
Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal
 hemispheres—one
 Love,
 one Dilation or Pride; 
—In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the
 pipe
 of
 good-will, arbitration, and indorsement, 
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, 
The drama of the s...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...rinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice—the barrels and the half and quarter
 barrels,
 the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees; 
The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats, canals; 
The daily routine of your own or any man’s life—the shop, yard, store, or
 factory;
These shows all near you by day and night—workman! whoever you are, your daily life! 
In that and them the heft of the heaviest—in them far more than you estimated, and
 far
 l...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...up, returning, with thinn’d ranks—young, yet very old, worn,
 marching,
 noticing nothing;)
—Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! 
O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! 
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! 
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession! 
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streami...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...
"A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
And the sea-tides tossing free; 20 
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
And the magic of the sea. 
And the voice of that wayward song 
Is singing and saying still: 25 
"A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

I remember the ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ful
And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships
Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing
Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the Obi or the Lena; 
Others the Niger or the Congo—others the Indus, the Burampooter and Cambodia; 
Others wait at the wharves of Manhattan, steam’d up, ready to start; 
Wait, swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia;
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux,
 the
 Hague, Copenhagen; 
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama; 
Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,
 Galveston,
 S...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good
 nutriment, 
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships; 
Not the superb ships, with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, 
Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues,—But you, as henceforth I see you,
Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars;) 
Divider of day-break you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun, measuring the sky, 
...Read more of this...

by Bogan, Louise
...hift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a
 death-sentence; 
The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves—the
 refrain of the anchor-lifters; 
The ring of alarm-bells—the cry of fire—the whirr of swift-streaking
 engines and hose-carts, with premonitory tinkles, and color’d lights; 
The steam-whistle—the solid roll of the train of approaching cars;
The slow-march play’d at the head of the association, marching two and two,

(They go to guard some ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...off in great flakes and slivers, 
The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes;
The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea; 
—The city fireman—the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack’d square, 
The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring, 
The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of
 the
 arms
 forcing the water, 
The slender, s...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...dear to me. 

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs! 
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! 
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! 
You doors and ascending steps! you arches! 
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has be...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...was time to be Good-bying,
Since the assembly-hour was nighing
In royal George's town at six that morn;
And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of hieing
Ere ring of bugle-horn.

"I've laid in food, Dear,
And broached the spiced and brewed, Dear;
And if our July hope should antedate,
Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood, Dear,
And fetch assistance straight.

"As for Buonaparte, forget him;
He's not like to land! But let h...Read more of this...

by Davies, William Henry
...e was not old, yet seemed so; for his face 
Looked like the drowned man's in the morgue, when it 
Has struck the wooden wharves and keels of ships. 
And all his flesh was pricked with Indian ink, 
His body marked as rare and delicate 
As dead men struck by lightning under trees 
And pictured with fine twigs and curlèd ferns; 
Chains on his neck and anchors on his arms; 
Rings on his fingers, bracelets on his wrist; 
And on his breast the Jane of Appledore 
Was schooner ri...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...heaves darkly out of the sea.
The walls and towers are warmed and gleam.
Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves.
The city stirs like one that is half in dream.

And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows,
Where one by one we wake and rise.
We gaze at the pale grey lustrous sea a moment,
We rub the darkness from our eyes,

And face our thousand devious secret mornings . . .
And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending,
Sha...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...he jar 
Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified 
The houses either side of that sad street, 
So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood 
Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, 
Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- 
A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. 
Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags 
Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks 
Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, 
Without the misery gleaming in his eye, 
Appeared before me;...Read more of this...

by McKay, Claude
...
The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed, 
The fortressed port through which the great ships pass, 
The tides, the wharves, the dens I contemplate, 
Are sweet like wanton loves because I hate....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...they?
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, 
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries, 
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between, 
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three
 miles
 off,

The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat
 slack-tow’d
 astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crest...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...and sinking waves—over the myriad fields, and the prairies
 wide; 
Over the dense-pack’d cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways, 
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death! 

17
To the tally of my soul, 
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night. 

Loud in the pines and cedars dim, 
Clear in the freshness moist, and the swamp-perfume; 
And I with my comrades there in the night.Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs