Best Sea Poems

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
...

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
...

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
...

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
...

I have seemingly missed your words of love,
Those words that were written in the sand
And erased by the first wave.
Do you remember, my love?
...

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.
...

To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go
Sailing far across the sea
All alone, just little me.
...

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
...

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
...

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
...

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.
...

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
...

Out of the starless night that covers me,
(O tribulation of the wind that rolls!)
Black as the cloud of some tremendous spell,
...

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!
...

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.
...

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
...

All day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their beating crests
Against the palisades of adamant.
My boy, he went to sea, long and long ago,
...

O tower of light, sad beauty
that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea,
calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry
of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea, wife
...

I must go down to the sea again,
to the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there -
I wonder if they're dry?
...

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
...

There are certain things - as, a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three -
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the Sea.
...

Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay;
...

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
...

'A soldier of the Union mustered out,'
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
...

My house is near a sea
The sea is my neighbour
I understand the sea
But the sea does not understand me,
...

March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapours progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.
...

A PROMISE to California,
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon:
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain,
...

We two were lovers, the Sea and I;
We plighted our troth ‘neath a summer sky.

And all through the riotous ardent weather
...

And a merchant said, 'Speak to us of Buying and Selling.'

And he answered and said:
...

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
...

Did I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life? ”
Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years
from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal.
...

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
...

Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
...

I saw you twice the other day
Stirring passion anew
It's easy saying just move on
Less easier to do
...

AFTER the Sea-Ship--after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:
...

This level reach of blue is not my sea;
Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,
Whose quiet ripples meet obediently
A marked and measured line, one after one.
...

Beautiful star with the crimson lips
And flagrant daffodil hair,
Come back, come back, in the shaking ships
...

The night, it is deserted
from the mountains to the sea.
But I, the one who rocks you,
I am not alone!
...

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.
...

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
...

Love, we're going home now,
Where the vines clamber over the trellis:
Even before you, the summer will arrive,
On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.
...

ABOARD, at a ship's helm,
A young steersman, steering with care.

...

Alone i lay on a wooden raft
Alone i stay in the dark
Alone i pray to survive
Alone i may not survive
...

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
...

At night, when the sea cradles me
And the pale star gleam
Lies down on its broad waves,
Then I free myself wholly
...

When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
...

And a man said, "Speak to us of Self-Knowledge."

And he answered, saying:
...

Sitting on the sands of the Bay, a small sea
Gigantic waves throw themselves on the sands, I see;
Methinks a true fact the sea never knows, is
How horribly, hungrily and thirstily it roars!
...

The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick
My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew
I must think hard of something, or be sick;
And could think hard of only one thing -- YOU!
...

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.
Ah! longer, longer, we.
...

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
My heart is gone, far, far from me;
And ever on its track will flee
My thoughts, my dreams, beyond the sea.
...

This sea of tears is a vast wasteland
That a maiden burdens with an imprinted hand
Creating swells and blustery typhoons
Breaking the core of the harvest moon
...

I came from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.
...

695

As if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea—
...

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
...

THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
...

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
...

Twas once upon a time I stood
Nearby the sounding sea.
By the man, who loved the maiden.
Beautiful, Annabel Lee.
...

Secret from the river
Carried by the endless waves
Flowing to return to the sea
And then hide in the ocean depth
...

Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
...

Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as
           you have to it yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
...

The sea is never still.
It pounds on the shore
Restless as a young heart,
Hunting.
...

There are certain things -a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three -
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the SEA.
...

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
...

Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'ver the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
...

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea.
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.
...

Butterfly, the wind blows sea-ward,
strong beyond the garden-wall!
Butterfly, why do you settle on my
shoe, and sip the dirt on my shoe,
...

Oh Sea, why do you deliberately pound the rocks along the bay,
Sending showers of white foam up, in a cascade of spray,
Can you not cease your travels, churning incessantly,
Surging back and forth, always longing to be free.
...

Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
...

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.
...

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.
...

IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
...

There are certain things -a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three -
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the SEA.
...

my first love poem
happens to be the world's oldest one
between
the seashore wind and the tree in the shore
...

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
...

...

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
...

The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
...

Oh for the breath of the briny deep,
And the tug of the bellying sail,
With the sea-gull's cry across the sky
...

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:
...

Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate,
Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword,
The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
...

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
...

When I was just a little girl
They brought me to the sea
I waded out as waves unfurled
Their salty gifts on me
...

(For one of his own pictures)

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
...

Our body may not be
what we think it to be
it could be much more in a sense
it could be a listener to world's resonance
...

WHAT ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?
Or, coming in, to avoid the bars, and follow the channel, a perfect
pilot needs?
...

825

An Hour is a Sea
Between a few, and me—
...

(Capri, Piccola Marina)


Timeless sea breezes,
...

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
...

Whirl up, sea—
Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
...

...

Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
...

...

Like a wave of the sea
Is a man without faith;
He doubts the might of God,
He doesn't firmly wait.
...

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams, come back to me.
...

The flower of the Alps told the seashell: "You're shining"
The seashell told the sea: "You echo"
The sea told the boat: "You're shuddering"
The boat told the fire: "You're glowing brightly"
...

Here within the half-light 'tween the night and day
Upon the sands I lie, with thoughts that idly stirr'd
...

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
...

There once was a hippo who wanted to fly --
Fly-hi-dee, try-hi-dee, my-hi-dee-ho.
So he sewed him some wings that could flap through the sky --
...

I’m soothed, I’m cheered up;
For me the sea craves.
Spread are for me its blue wings,
With my frame, I feel the waves.
...