The Open Sea

Related poetry:

1. 399. Song-Open the door to me, oh OH, open the door, some pity to shew, Oh, open the door to me, oh, Tho’ thou hast been false, I’ll ever prove true, Oh, open the door to me, oh. Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek, But caulder thy love for me, oh: The frost that freezes the life at my heart, […]...
2. Sun and Shadow As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, […]...
3. Seaweed When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landword in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed from the rocks: From Bermuda’s reefs; from edges Of sunken ledges, In some far-off, bright Azore; From Bahama, and the dashing Silver-flashing Surges of San Salvador; From the tumbling surf, that buries […]...
4. On this wondrous sea On this wondrous sea Sailing silently, Ho! Pilot, ho! Knowest thou the shore Where no breakers roar Where the storm is o’er? In the peaceful west Many the sails at rest The anchors fast Thither I pilot thee Land Ho! Eternity! Ashore at last!...
5. God of the Open Air I Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair With flowers beneath, above with starry lights, And set thine altars everywhere, On mountain heights, In woodlands dim with many a dream, In valleys bright with springs, And on the curving capes of every stream: Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings Of morning, to abide […]...
6. The Harper Like a drift of faded blossoms Caught in a slanting rain, His fingers glimpsed down the strings of his harp In a tremulous refrain: Patter and tinkle, and drip and drip! Ah! but the chords were rainy sweet! And I closed my eyes and I bit my lip, As he played there in the street. […]...
7. Sonnet 61: Is it thy will thy image should keep open Is it thy will thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames […]...
8. A Day in the Open Ho, a day Whereon we may up and away, With a fetterless wind that is out on the downs, And there piping a call to the fallow and shore, Where the sea evermore Surgeth over the gray reef, and drowns The fierce rocks with white foam; It is ours with untired feet to roam Where […]...
9. OPEN TABLE MANY a guest I’d see to-day, Met to taste my dishes! Food in plenty is prepar’d, Birds, and game, and fishes. Invitations all have had, All proposed attending. Johnny, go and look around! Are they hither wending? Pretty girls I hope to see, Dear and guileless misses, Ignorant how sweet it is Giving tender kisses. […]...
10. Song of the Open Road 1 AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune-I myself am good fortune; Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Strong and content, I travel the open road. The earth-that […]...
11. THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY I sat on a low stone wall Watching the blue blood of the azaleas Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles. A seamless transparency of rain Lowering over the turning trees My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s ‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker To the swathes of heather. I stood on the moor top Where the tracks cross […]...
12. Mist In The Valley These hills, to hurt me more, That am hurt already enough,- Having left the sea behind, Having turned suddenly and left the shore That I had loved beyond all words, even a song’s words, to Convey, And built me a house on upland acres, Sweet with the pinxter, bright and rough With the rusty blackbird […]...
13. Ultima Thule: Dedication to G. W. G With favoring winds, o’er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth, The lost Atlantis of our youth! Whither, ah, whither? […]...
14. Ballad of Another Ophelia Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, Lamps in a wash of rain! Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, Oh tears on the window pane! Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples, Full of disappointment and of rain, Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow […]...
15. Adieu, Adieu! My Native Land Adieu, adieu! my native shore Fades o’ver the waters blue; The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild sea-mew. Yon sun that sets upon the sea We follow in his flight; Farewell awhile to him and thee, My native Land-Good Night! A few short hours, and he will rise To give the morrow […]...
16. Mollymook All week, in this rented house, sea spray and whispers of wind weave through the eucalypts, like a Sondheim melody. Through the pewter leaves the sea glimpsed from the wooden deck is, at times, teal silk. Other days it is grey. Longing stirs like waves about to break on the shore and sometimes they lift […]...
17. You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop You ask why sometimes I say stop Why sometimes I cry no While I shake with pleasure. What do I fear, you ask, Why don’t I always want to come And come again to that molten Deep sea center where the nerves Fuse open and the brain And body shine with a black wordless light […]...
18. The house where I was born (08) I open my eyes, yes, it’s the house where I was born, Exactly as it was and nothing more. The same small dining room whose window Gives onto a peach tree that never grows. A man and a woman are seated At this window, facing one another, They are talking, for once. And the child […]...
19. A Night-Rain in Summer Open the window, and let the air Freshly blow upon face and hair, And fill the room, as it fills the night, With the breath of the rain’s sweet might. Hark! the burthen, swift and prone! And how the odorous limes are blown! Stormy Love’s abroad, and keeps Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps. Not a […]...
20. OPEN LETTER TO ANDY C Sorry, Writer in Residence on the Great North Run The last thing I’d ever do is listen to your spin “You risk losing potential allies in your war against the philistines, Astley, Armitage, Duffy, Sansom, unashamedly provincial, Defiantly Un-Oxbridge, not the enemy!” Sorry, Andy, arse-licking’s not to my taste. I always thought it wasn’t yours, […]...
21. Under Cover of Night To slip into your shadow under cover of night. To follow your footsteps, your shadow at the window. That shadow at the window is you and no one else; It’s you. Do not open that window behind whose curtains you’re moving. Shut your eyes. I’d like to shut them with my lips. But the window […]...
22. The Ballad of the Calliope By the far Samoan shore, Where the league-long rollers pour All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay, Riding lightly at their ease, In the calm of tropic seas, The three great nations’ warships at their anchors proudly lay. Riding lightly, head to wind, With the coral reefs behind, Three German and three […]...
23. Faure's Second Piano Quartet On a day like this the rain comes Down in fat and random drops among The ailanthus leaves -“the tree Of Heaven” – the leaves that on moon- Lit nights shimmer black and blade- Shaped at this third-floor window. And there are bunches of small green Knobs, buds, crowded together. The Rapid music fills in […]...
24. Sonnet XXII: Wild Is the Foaming Sea Wild is the foaming Sea! The surges roar! And nimbly dart the livid lightnings round! On the rent rock the angry waves rebound; Ah me! the less’ning bark is seen no more! Along the margin of the trembling shore, Loud as the blast my frantic cries shall sound, My storm-drench’d limbs the flinty fragments wound, […]...
25. The Piano-Organ My student-lamp is lighted, The books and papers are spread; A sound comes floating upwards, Chasing the thoughts from my head. I open the garret window, Let the music in and the moon; See the woman grin for coppers, While the man grinds out the tune. Grind me a dirge or a requiem, Or a […]...
26. Cobwebs It is a land with neither night nor day, Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain, Nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain Stretches thro’ long unbroken miles away: While thro’ the sluggish air a twilight grey Broodeth; no moons or seasons wax and wane, No ebb and flow are there among […]...
27. Winter Seascape The sea runs back against itself With scarcely time for breaking wave To cannonade a slatey shelf And thunder under in a cave. Before the next can fully burst The headwind, blowing harder still, Smooths it to what it was at first – A slowly rolling water-hill. Against the breeze the breakers haste, Against the […]...
28. Pity Me Not Because The Light Of Day Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s […]...
29. The Thin Edge With you, my heart is quiet here, And all my thoughts are cool as rain. I sit and let the shifting year Go by before the windowpane, And reach my hand to yours, my dear. . . I wonder what it’s like in Spain....
30. The Story of Mongrel Grey This is the story the stockman told On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright; The moon rose up like a globe of gold And flooded the plain with her mellow light. We watched the cattle till dawn of day And he told me the story of Mongrel Grey. He was a knock-about station hack, […]...
31. The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon There is an inn, a merry old inn Beneath an old grey hill, And there they brew a beer so brown That the Man in the Moon himself came down One night to drink his fill. The ostler has a tipsy cat That plays a five-stringed fiddle; And up and down he saws his bow […]...
32. The Black Tower Say that the men of the old black tower, Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds, Their money spent, their wine gone sour, Lack nothing that a soldier needs, That all are oath-bound men: Those banners come not in. There in the tomb stand the dead upright, But winds come up from the shore: […]...
33. Suzanne Brother Paul! look! -but he rushes to a different Window. The moon! I heard shrieks and thought: What’s that? That’s just Suzanne Talking to the moon! Pounding on the window With both fists: Paul! Paul! -and talking to the moon. Shrieking And pounding the glass With both fists! Brother Paul! the moon!...
34. Crossroads The second half of my life will be black To the white rind of the old and fading moon. The second half of my life will be water Over the cracked floor of these desert years. I will land on my feet this time, Knowing at least two languages and who My friends are. I […]...
35. Wraith “Thin Rain, whom are you haunting, That you haunt my door?” -Surely it is not I she’s wanting; Someone living here before- “Nobody’s in the house but me: You may come in if you like and see.” Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,- Have you seen her, any of you?- Grey shawl, and leaning on […]...
36. Rebecca Wasson Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, After each other drifting, past my window drifting! And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting The years till a terror came in my heart at times, With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last My hundredth year was reached! And still […]...
37. Moon Song A child saw in the morning skies The dissipated-looking moon, And opened wide her big blue eyes, And cried: “Look, look, my lost balloon!” And clapped her rosy hands with glee: “Quick, mother! Bring it back to me.” A poet in a lilied pond Espied the moon’s reflected charms, And ravished by that beauty blonde, […]...
38. Old Ironsides Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon’s roar; The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood, […]...
39. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
40. At Melville's Tomb Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured. And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in […]...