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Famous Plash Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Plash poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous plash poems. These examples illustrate what a famous plash poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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...By Sidney and Clifford Lanier.

O wish that's vainer than the plash
Of these wave-whimsies on the shore:
"Give us a pearl to fill the gash --
God, let our dead friend live once more!"

O wish that's stronger than the stroke
Of yelling wave and snapping levin;
"God, lift us o'er the Last Day's smoke,
All white, to Thee and her in Heaven!"

O wish that's swifter than the race
Of wave and wind in sea and sky;
Let's take t...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney



...l in the gondola! 

Through maze on maze of silent waterways,
Guarded by lightless sentinel palaces,
We glide; the soft plash of the oar, that sways
Our life, like love does, laps --- no softer seas
Swoon in the bosom of Pacific bays!
We are in tune with the infinite ecstasies,
Adela!
Sway with me, sway with me in the gondola!

They hold us in, these tangled sepulchres
That guard such ghostly life. They tower above
Our passage like the cliffs of death. There stirs
No ...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister
...enigmatically sedate, 

Fans herself while the moments creep, 
Upon her cushions half-asleep, 
And hears the fountains plash and weep. 

Dorothy's chamber undefiled. 
The winds and waters sing afar 
Their song of sighing strange and wild 
To lull to sleep the petted child. 

From head to foot with subtle care, 
Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin 
With odorous oils and benzoin. 
And flowers faint in a corner there....Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles
...ain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage -

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...canet.


He dream'd; but Arthur with a hundred spears
Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed,
And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle,
The wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh
Glared on a huge machicolated tower
That stood with open doors, where out was roll'd
A roar of riot, as from men secure
Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease
Among their harlot-brides, an evil song.
"Lo there," said one of Arthur's youth, for there,
High on a grim dead tree before the...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...hing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.
Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.
Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.
And I wished for night and you.
I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,
White and shining in the silver-flecke...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...y,
No Ring -- no Marvel --
Men, and Feats --
Dissolved as utterly --
As Bird's far Navigation
Discloses just a Hue --
A plash of Oars, a Gaiety --
Then swallowed up, of View....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...beating in a tear.

The listening soul is full of dreams
That shape the wondrous-varying themes
As cries of men or plash of streams.

Or noise of summer rain-drops round
That patter daintily a-ground
With hints of heaven in the sound.

Or noble wind-tones chanting free
Through morning-skies across the sea
Wild hymns to some strange majesty.

O, if one trope, clear-cut and keen,
May type the art of Song's best queen,
White-hot of soul, white-chaste of mien,

O...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...My boat is dancing to and fro.
The eve is still,
Yet from the hill
The killdeer echoes loud and shrill.
The paddles plash,
The wavelets dash,
We see the summer lightning flash;[Pg 286]
While now and then,
In marsh and fen
Too muddy for the feet of men,
Where neither bird
Nor beast has stirred,
The spotted bullfrog's croak is heard.
The wind is high,
The grasses sigh,
The sluggish stream goes sobbing by.
And f...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...eaves had stirred,
Endymion would have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had thrust aside the branches of her oak
To see th...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
H...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...His left the pole-axe grasped, to guide
     And stay his footing in the tide.
     He stumbled twice,—the foam splashed high,
     With hoarser swell the stream raced by;
     And had he fallen,—forever there,
     Farewell Duncraggan's orphan heir!
     But still, as if in parting life,
     Firmer he grasped the Cross of strife,
     Until the opposing bank he gained,
     And up the chapel pathway strained.
     A blithesome rout that morning-tide
     Had...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...net. 

He dreamed; but Arthur with a hundred spears 
Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed, 
And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle, 
The wide-winged sunset of the misty marsh 
Glared on a huge machicolated tower 
That stood with open doors, whereout was rolled 
A roar of riot, as from men secure 
Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease 
Among their harlot-brides, an evil song. 
`Lo there,' said one of Arthur's youth, for there, 
High on a grim dead tree bef...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

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