Famous Whirlpool Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Whirlpool poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous whirlpool poems. These examples illustrate what a famous whirlpool poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Jarrell, Randall
...the south.
The world—my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.
And it is meaningless. In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain—in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live b...Read more of this...
by
Gorry, Godfrey Mutiso
...f African literature
Pumping wordy blood into fragile young minds.
Rejuvenating the African word
That merges into a whirlpool mixture
Of creativity, and strengthen our verbosity.
Impregnated words
Be borne from fertility the center....Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...p.
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast
Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
With dark obliterating course, he sate:
As if their genii were the ministers
Appointed to conduct him to the light
Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate,
Holding the steady helm. Evening came on;
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
Twilight,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...crawls
A garden holding to her hand
With birds and animals
With men and women and waterfalls
Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool of ships
And stunned and still on the green, laid veil
Sand with legends in its virgin laps
And prophets loud on the burned dunes;
Insects and valleys hold her thighs hard,
Times and places grip her breast bone,
She is breaking with seasons and clouds;
Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves,
with moving fish and rounded stones
Up and down the...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...a
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...se enslaving eyes
Redemption sparkles!--I am sad and lost."
Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost
Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air,
Warm mountaineer! for canst thou only bear
A woman's sigh alone and in distress?
See not her charms! Is Phoebe passionless?
Phoebe is fairer far--O gaze no more:--
Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty's store,
Behold her panting in the forest grass!
Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass
For tenderness the arms so idly lain
Am...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..., gleaming,
Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
Seized the line of Hiawatha,
Swung with all his weight upon it,
Made a whirlpool in the water,
Whirled the birch canoe in circles,
Round and round in gurgling eddies,
Till the circles in the water
Reached the far-off sandy beaches,
Till the water-flags and rushes
Nodded on the distant margins.
But when Hiawatha saw him
Slowly rising through the water,
Lifting up his disk refulgent,
Loud he shouted in derision,
"Es...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...In the midst of this whirlpool of the world, hasten to
gather some fruit. Seat thyself upon the throne of gaiety
and bring the cup to thy lips. God is indifferent both
to creed and sin; enjoy then here below, what pleases
thee....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ocking-horses. There, there, there, now.”
“Make believe!
When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool,
Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe?
How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you
That I met him! What’s to follow now may be for you to choose.
Do you hear me? Won’t you listen? It’s an easy thing to listen….”
“And it’s easy to be crazy when there’s everything to lose.”
“If at last you have a ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...sed
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool steered.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But, he once passed, soon after, when Man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain,
Following his track (such was the will of Heaven)
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondr...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...ning silence,
We drink a deep-sea cup.
Nothing the fay remembers,
Yet when she turns to me,
We meet beneath the whirlpool,
We swim the golden sea....Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...en Alfred came to Athelney
To be an English king.
For earthquake swallowing earthquake
Uprent the Wessex tree;
The whirlpool of the pagan sway
Had swirled his sires as sticks away
When a flood smites the sea.
And the great kings of Wessex
Wearied and sank in gore,
And even their ghosts in that great stress
Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,
With the lords that died in Lyonesse
And the king that comes no more.
And the God of the Golden Dragon
Was dumb upon h...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...es show'ring fruits and coined gold?
4.16 Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
4.17 Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
4.18 Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling, and affright?
4.19 Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?
4.20 Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?"
4.21 The Virgin started from her seat, and with a shriek
4.22 Fled back unhinder'd till she came into the vales of Ha...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...e the breakers rebound,
The stripling commends him to Heaven,
And--a scream of horror is heard around,--
And now by the whirlpool away he is driven,
And secretly over the swimmer brave
Close the jaws, and he vanishes 'neath the dark wave.
O'er the watery gulf dread silence now lies,
But the deep sends up a dull yell,
And from mouth to mouth thus trembling it flies:
"Courageous stripling, oh, fare thee well!"
And duller and duller the howls recommence,
While they pause in...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...so black and steep,
Receives her roaring linn
As the dark caverns of the deep
Suck the wild whirlpool in,
So did the deep and darksome pass
Devour the battle's mingled mass;
None linger now upon the plain
Save those who ne'er shall fight again.
XIX.
'Now westward rolls the battle's din,
That deep and doubling pass within.—
Minstrel, away! the work of fate
Is bearing on; its issue wait,
W...Read more of this...
by
Field, Edward
...He didn't die in the whirlpool by the mill
where he had fallen in after a wild chase
by all the people of the town.
Somehow he clung to an overhanging rock
until the villagers went away.
And when he came out, he was changed forever,
that soft heart of his had hardened
and he really was a monster now.
He was out to pay them back,
to throw the lie of brotherly love
...Read more of this...
by
Verhaeren, Emile
...toil so scantily—
Passing the walls and the houses by
The rope-maker, visionary white,
From depths of the evening's whirlpool dim,
Draws the horizons in to him.
Horizons that stretch back afar.
Where strife, regrets, hates, furies are:
Tears of the silence, and the tears
That find a voice: serenest years,
Or years convulsed with pang and throe:
Horizons of the long ago,
These gestures of the Past they shew.
Of old—as one in sleep, life, errant, strayed
I...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile
or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of ...Read more of this...
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