There is nothing more refreshing than the ocean and its waves. However, reading ocean poems can help when you can’t really reach the sea at any given time!
Consequently, we bring to you some amazing poems on the ocean in this article. Hope you have fun reconnecting with nature and its gifts through these.
“The Ocean” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Ocean Poems)
The Ocean has its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Though there be fury on the waves,
Beneath them there is none.The awful spirits of the deep
Hold their communion there;
And there are those for whom we weep,
The young, the bright, the fair.Calmly the wearied seamen rest
Beneath their own blue sea.
The ocean solitudes are blest,
For there is purity.The earth has guilt, the earth has care,
Unquiet are its graves;
But peaceful sleep is ever there,
Beneath the dark blue waves.
“By the Sea” by Emily Dickinson
I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me.And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground, upon the sands.But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,
And past my apron and my belt,
And past my bodice too,And made as he would eat me up
As wholly as a dew
Upon a dandelion’s sleeve –
And then I started too.And he – he followed close behind;
I felt his silver heel
Upon my ankle, – then my shoes
Would overflow with pearl.Until we met the solid town,
No man he seemed to know;
And bowing with a mighty look
At me, the sea withdrew.
“Sea Fever” by John Masefield (Ocean Poems)
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.”
“The Sea” by James Reeves
(Ocean Poems)
The sea is a hungry dog,
Giant and grey.
He rolls on the beach all day.
With his clashing teeth and shaggy jaws
Hour upon hour he gnaws
The rumbling, tumbling stones,
And ‘Bones, bones, bones, bones!’
“The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.
“How Like the Sea” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
How like the sea, the myriad-minded sea,
Is this large love of ours: so vast, so deep,
So full of myseries! it, too, can keep
Its secrets, like the ocean; and is free,
Free, as the boundless main. Now it may be
Calm like the brow of some sweet child asleep;
Again its seething billows surge and leap
And break in fulness of their ecstasy.
Each wave so like the wave which came before,
Yet never two the same! Imperative
And then persuasive as the cooing dove,
Encroaching ever on the yielding shore—
Ready to take; yet readier still to give—
How like the myriad-minded sea, is love.
“Here’s an Ocean Tale” by Kwoya Fagin Maples
My brother still bites his nails to the quick,
but lately he’s been allowing them to grow.
So much hurt is forgotten with the horizon
as backdrop. It comes down to simple math.
The beach belongs to none of us, regardless
of color, or money. We all come to sit
at the feet of the surf, watch waves
drag the sand and crush shells for hours.
My brother’s feet are coated in sparkly powder
that leaves a sticky residue when dry.
He’s twenty-three, still unaware of his value.
It is too easy, reader, for me to call him
beautiful, standing against the sky
in cherrywood skin and almond
eyes in the sun, so instead I tell him
he is handsome. I remind him
of a day when I brought him to the beach
as a boy. He’d wandered, trailing a tourist,
a white man pointing toward his hotel—
all for a promised shark tooth.
I yelled for him, pulled him to me,
drove us home. Folly Beach. He was six.
He almost went.
“Crossing the Bar” by Lord Tennyson Alfred
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
“Moonrise at Sea” by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Up from the dark the moon begins to creep;
And now a pallid, haggard face lifts she
Above the water-line: thus from the deep
A drownéd body rises solemnly.
“For Joseph Conrad” by Countee Cullen (Ocean Poems)
Not of the dust, but of the wave
His final couch should be;
They lie not easy in a grave
Who once have known the sea.
How shall earth’s meagre bed enthrall
The hardiest seaman of them all?
“Fog” by Robert Hillyer
Where does the sea end and the sky begin?
We sink in blue for which there is no word.
Two sails, fog-coloured, loiter on the thin
Mirage of ocean.
There is no sound of wind, nor wave, nor bird,
Nor any motion.
Except the shifting mists that turn and lift,
Showing behind the two limp sails a third,
Then blotting it again.
A gust, a spattering of rain,
The lazy water breaks in nervous rings.
Somewhere a bleak bell buoy sings,
Muffled at first, then clear,
Its wet, grey monotone.
The dead are here.
We are not quite alone.
“The Ocean Inside Him” by Rick Noguchi
After Kenji Takezo fell from a wave,
The turbulence of whitewash confused
His sense of direction.
He breathed in
When he should have
Held tight. By accident, he swallowed
The Pacific. The water poured down his throat,
A blue cascade he could not see.
He felt in his stomach
The heavy life of the ocean.
It wasn’t funny, but he giggled
When a school of fish tickled his ribs.
He went home, the surf not rideable,
It was no longer there,
The water weighted in his belly.
That night, while he slept, the tide moved.
The long arms of the moon
Reached inside him pulling the Pacific free.
When he woke the next morning,
He lay in a puddle of ocean that was his.
Frequently Asked Questions
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold, and Langston Hughes wrote about the sea.
What is the theme of the ocean poem?
The themes in this poem are death and isolation.
What is the story of Heart of ocean?
The Heart of the Ocean, also known as La Coeur de la Mer, is a necklace gifted from Caledon Hockley to Rose DeWitt Bukater. In the story, the diamond was originally owned by Louis XVI and cut into a heart shape after the French Revolution. Source
Summary on Ocean Poems!
Be it a classic or an Instagram poem by a creator, poems express and connect the heart’s desires.
Moreover, ocean poems are all the more refreshing when you just feel like de-stressing and laying back for a while.
Hope you enjoyed this short collection of ocean poems from around the world!
Also Read: Easy Ocean Craft For Kids Step-By-Step Tutorial
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