Poems About Ships

[Cruiselady83]

Please feel free to post any of your favourite poems or quotes about Ships,The Sea or Whatever.

[Cruiselady83]

The lovely thing about cruising is that planning usually turns out to be of little use. But £ is of great use.

 

The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails.

 

At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.

 

There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.

 

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, 'Onward!'the sailors cry; Carry the lass that's born to be queen Over the sea to Skye

 

No better friend than a long voyage at sea

 

The sea! the sea! the open sea!The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

 

 

 

hark, now hear the sailors cry,

smell the sea, and feel the sky

let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic...”

[PalmHarborCruiser]

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

 

Jacques Yves Cousteau

[Magnum60]

Not a poem, but Gordon Lightfoot sang a wonderful song about the loss of the Great Lakes iron ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald that went down in the late 1970s. The song had some wonderful lines in it.

Caution: if you listen to it the music sticks with you for hours. Great tune.

[StanandJim]

Written by Poet Laureate John Masefield on the occasion of the Launch of the Queen Mary in 1939"

For ages you were rock, far below light,

Crushed, without shape, earth's unregarded bone.

Then Man in all the marvel of his might

Quarried you out and burned you from the stone.

Then, being pured to essence, you were naught

But weight and hardness, body without nerve;

Then Man in all the marvel of his thought

Smithied you into form of leap and curve;

 

And took you, so, and bent you to his vast,

Intense great world of passionate design,

Curve after changing curving, braced and mast

To stand all tumult that can tumble brine,

 

And left you, this, a rampart of a ship,

Long as a street and lofty as a tower,

Ready to glide in thunder from the slip

And shear the water with majesty of power.

 

I long to see you leaping to the urge

Of the great engines, rolling as you go,

Parting the seas in sunder in a surge,

Shredding a trackway like a mile of snow.

 

With all the wester streaming from your hull

And all gear twanging shrilly as you race,

And effortless above your stern a gull

Leaning upon the blast and keeping pace.

 

May shipwreck and collision, fog and fire,

Rock, shoal and other evils of the sea,

Be kept from you; and may the heart's desire

Of those who speed your launching come to be

Edited June 2, 2016 by StanandJim

[Philly Steve]

StanandJim, thank you for a wonderful post. :cool:

[blythe]

One of my favorites: Big Steamers by Rudyard Kipling

[Davechipp74]

Hear the rime of the Ancient Mariner

See his eye as he stops one of three

Mesmerises one of the wedding guests

Stay here and listen to the nightmares

of the Sea

 

And the music plays on, as the bride passes by

Caught by his spell and

the Mariner tells his tale.

 

Driven south to the land of the snow and ice

To a place where nobody's been

Through the snow fog flies on the albatross

Hailed in God's name,

hoping good luck it brings.

 

And the ship sails on, back to the North

Through the fog and ice and

the albatross follows on

 

The mariner kills the bird of good omen

His shipmates cry against what he's done

But when the fog clears, they justify him

And make themselves a part of the crime.

 

Sailing on and on and North across the sea

Sailing on and on and North 'till all is calm

 

The albatross begins with its vengeance

A terrible curse a thirst has begun

His shipmates blame bad luck on the Mariner

About his neck, the dead bird is hung.

 

And the curse goes on and on and on at sea

And the thirst goes on and on for them and me

 

"Day after day, day after day,

we stuck nor breath nor motion

As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean

Water, water everywhere and

all the boards did shrink

Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink."

 

[sAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)]

 

There, calls the mariner

there comes a ship over the line

But how can she sail with no wind

in her sails and no tide.

 

See... onward she comes

Onwards she nears, out of the sun

See... she has no crew

She has no life, wait but there's two

 

Death and she Life in Death,

they throw their dice for the crew

She wins the Mariner and he belongs to her now.

Then ... crew one by one

They drop down dead, two hundred men

She... She, Life in Death.

She lets him live, her chosen one.

 

[NARRATIVE]

"One after one by the star dogged moon,

too quick for groan or sigh

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang

and cursed me with his eye

Four times fifty living men

(and I heard nor sigh nor groan),

With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,

they dropped down one by one."

 

[sAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)]

 

The curse it lives on in their eyes

The Mariner he wished he'd die

Along with the sea creatures

But they lived on, so did he.

 

And by the light of the moon

He prays for their beauty not doom

With heart he blesses them

God's creatures all of them too.

 

Then the spell starts to break

The albatross falls from his neck

Sinks down like lead into the Sea

Then down in falls comes the rain.

 

Hear the groans of the long dead seamen

See them stir and they start to rise

Bodies lifted by good spirits

None of them speak

and they're lifeless in their eyes

 

And revenge is still sought, penance starts again

Cast into a trance and the nightmare carries on.

 

Now the curse is finally lifted

And the Mariner sights his home

Spirits go from the long dead bodies

Form their own light and

the Mariner's left alone

 

And then a boat came sailing towards him

It was a joy he could not believe

The Pilot's boat, his son and the hermit

Penance of life will fall onto Him.

 

And the ship it sinks like lead into the sea

And the hermit shrives the mariner of his sins

 

The Mariner's bound to tell of his story

To tell his tale wherever he goes

To teach God's word by his own example

That we must love all things that God made.

 

And the wedding guest's a sad and wiser man

And the tale goes on and on and on.

:cool:

[rjgdjg]

In a recent Traveler magazine article, Sigourney Weaver quoted this from the song "Bon Voyage" of the musical "Anything Goes":

 

"And there's no cure like travel

To help you unravel

The worries of living today.

When the poor brain is cracking

There's nothing like packing

A suitcase and sailing away."

 

Wouldn't you agree???! - Musing About Cruising

[cruisingcoppertop]

This isn't about ships, but it a song I gave to my husband on our 29th anniversary cruise:

 

I wish the words were my own...

 

 

My love is deep as the sea that flows forever,

You ask me when will it end I tell you never.

My love is bright as the sun That shines forever,

You ask me when will it die I tell you never.

The world may disappear like a castle of sand,

But I'll be waiting here With my heart in my hand.

My love I love you so much Now and forever,

You ask me when will it die I tell you never