Poems of the Sea

by MCCLATCHY, J. D.

• ISBN13: 9780375413292
• ISBN10: 0375413294
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-30
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

Throughout history, poets have felt the ancient pull of the sea, exploring the full range of mankind's nautical fears, dreams, and longings. The colorful legends of the seapirates and mermaids, phantom ships and the sunken city of Atlantishave inspired as many imaginations as have the realities of lighthouses and shipwrecks, of icebergs and frothing foam and seaweed. This marvelous collection includes classics old and new, from Homer and Milton to Plath and Merwin. Here are Tennyson's seductive sea-fairies next to Poe's beloved Annabel Lee. Here is Coleridge's darkly brooding "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" alongside the grandeur of Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five." And here is Masefield's "I must go down to the seas again" alongside Cavafy's "Ithaka" and Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West." In the wide variety of lyrics collected heresonnets and sea chanteys, ballads and hymns and prayerswe feel the encompassing power of our planet's restless waters as metaphor, mystery, and muse.

Author Biography

J. D. McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems: Scenes From Another Life, Stars Principal, The Rest of the Way, Ten Commandments, and Hazmat. He has also written two books of essays: White Paper and Twenty Questions. He has edited many other books, including The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, Poets on Painters, and Horace: The Odes. In addition, he edits The Voice of the Poet series for Random House AudioBooks, and has written seven opera libretti. He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at Princeton, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, and is now a professor at Yale, where since 1991 he has edited The Yale Review. He lives in Stonington, Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Foreword	11	(4)
SEA-FEVER
``Exultation is the going''	15	(1)
Emily Dickinson
Sea Longing	16	(1)
Sara Teasdale
The Return	17	(2)
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Mana of the Sea	19	(1)
D. H. Lawrence
Seafarer	20	(1)
William Carlos Williams
Exiled	21	(2)
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sea-fever	23	(4)
John Masefield
THE CALL OF THE DEEP
From Paradise Lost, Book VII	27	(2)
John Milton
From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage	29	(3)
George Gordon
Lord Byron
From Queen Mab	32	(1)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
On the Sea	33	(1)
John Keats
The Sea Limits	34	(2)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
By the Sea	36	(1)
Christina Rossetti
Man and Sea	37	(1)
Charles Baudelaire
The Sea	38	(1)
Paul Valery
The Sound of the Sea	39	(1)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Voyages, II	40	(2)
Hart Crane
Full Fathom Five	42	(5)
Sylvia Plath
STORM AND CALM
From The Storm	47	(2)
John Donne
A Vision of the Sea	49	(7)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Beacon in the Storm	56	(2)
Victor Hugo
A Hurricane at Sea	58	(3)
May Swenson
Qua Cursum Ventus	61	(2)
Arthur Hugh Clough
A Calm at Sea	63	(1)
Johann Wolfgamg von Goethe
The Even Sea	64	(3)
May Swenson
BALLADS
Sir Patrick Spens	67	(5)
Anonymous
From The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner	72	(6)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Humphrey Gilbert	78	(2)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Casabianca	80	(2)
Felicia Hemans
The Wreck of the Hesperus	82	(5)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Phantom Ship	87	(3)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Trafalgar	90	(7)
Anonymous
SONGS AND CHANTEYS
From The Tempest	97	(1)
William Shakespeare
We'll Go to Sea No More	98	(2)
Anonymous
Frankie's Trade	100	(3)
Rudyard Kipling
The Death of Admiral Benbow	103	(3)
Anonymous
Hearts of Oak	106	(2)
Anonymous
Davey Jones's Locker	108	(1)
Anonymous
A Song in Storm	109	(2)
Rudyard Kipling
A Pier-head Chorus	111	(1)
John Masefield
From H.M.S. Pinafore	112	(3)
W. S. Gilbert
Matelot	115	(4)
Noel Coward
``My bounding bark''	119	(1)
Anonymous
Blow the man Down	120	(3)
Anonymous
Drunken Sailor	123	(4)
Anonymous
ANTHEM, PRAYER, HYMN
Rule, Britannia	127	(2)
James Thomson
From Carmina Gadelica	129	(2)
Anonymous
Father Mapple's Hymn	131	(1)
Herman Melville
The Sea Ritual	132	(1)
George Darley
The Sailors' Hymn	133	(4)
William Whiting
SEAFARERS
From Paradise Lost, Book XI	137	(2)
John Milton
From The Odyssey, Book XII	139	(6)
Homer
From Ulysses	145	(2)
Alfred
Lord Tennyson
Ithaka	147	(2)
Constantine Cavafy
Song of the Argonauts	149	(2)
William Morris
The Seafarer	151	(3)
Anonymous
Columbus	154	(2)
Joaquin Miller
The Pirate	156	(2)
George Gordon
Lord Byron
Old Ironsides	158	(1)
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Seafarer	159	(4)
Archibald MacLeish
WRECKS AT SEA
The Shipwreck	163	(2)
W. S. Merwin
The Convergence of the Twain	165	(2)
Thomas Hardy
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket	167	(7)
Robert Lowell
The Wreck of the Thresher	174	(5)
William Meredith
LEGENDS
From Richard III	179	(1)
William Shakespeare
The World Below the Brine	180	(1)
Walt Whitman
In Praise of Neptune	181	(1)
Thomas Campion
Leviathan	182	(2)
W. S. Merwin
The Mermaid	184	(3)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Sea Lullaby	187	(2)
Elinor Wylie
Annabel Lee	189	(2)
Edgar Allan Poe
The City in the Sea	191	(3)
Edgar Allan Poe
Atlantis	194	(2)
Conrad Aiken
Sunk Lyonesse	196	(3)
Walter De La Mare
ABOVE AND BEYOND
The Berg	199	(2)
Herman Melville
The Tuft of Kelp	201	(1)
Herman Melville
Seaweed	202	(3)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Lighthouse	205	(6)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
READING THE WAVES
Neigther Out Far Nor In Deep	211	(1)
Robert Frost
A Grave	212	(2)
Marianne Moore
Marine Surface, Low Overcast	214	(3)
Amy Clampitt
Billy in the Darbies	217	(2)
Herman Melville
Echoes	219	(1)
Walter De La Mare
``Break, break, break''	220	(1)
Alfred
Lord Tennyson
Sea-change	221	(1)
Genevieve Taggard
Crossing the Bar	222	(1)
Alfred
Lord Tennyson
At Melville's Tomb	223	(1)
Hart Crane
Dover Beach	224	(2)
Matthew Arnold
Putting to Sea	226	(2)
Louise Bogan
``I started early''	228	(2)
Emily Dickinson
Not Waving but Drowining	230	(1)
Stevie Smith
The Idea of Order at Key West	231	(3)
Wallace Stevens
Marina	234	(2)
T. S. Eliot
As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life	236	(7)
Walt Whitman
Acknowledgments	243	(4)
Index of Authors	247