Poems and songs with sea theme

[Jojo]

Hello, I'm looking for more poems with the sea theme, and also songs.
Maybe also stories, but more for children, such as Andersen's "Little mermaid" and "The bell".
Here's what I know so far:

Poems:
Rime of the ancient mariner
"To the harbormaster" by Frank O'Hara
the one by e.e.cummings with shells
possibly some more but i dont remember now

Songs:
"Good morning captain" by Slint
"Sinking ship full of optimists" by Transistor Transistor
"Take you on a cruise" by Interpol


As for songs, the lyrics dont have to be strictly about sea, they can just remind you of the sound of the waves.

[Sara]

The first song that comes off the top of my head in a modern context is "The Mariner's Revenge" by the Decemberists. There are others, but that one in particular is quite apropos. Actually, I think there may be a couple from that album, Picaresque. Let me contemplate the poetry and I may come up with a bunch of those, too.

[Jojo]

Thank you very much ;)

[Ursula]

Here are three story books for kids.
The Legend of the Golden Snail


Captain Pugwash


The Sailor Dog

[HJ]

I can think of a few poems with the theme of the sea:

Salt Water Poems And Ballads - John Masefield - includes Sea Fever, which starts:

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky"

Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson, Crossing the Bar, which starts:

"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!"

Matthew Arnold, The Forsaken Merman, which starts:

"Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below."

Shakespeare, The Tempest, Aeriel's song "Full fathom five":

"Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made"


Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Byron includes a passage describing the sea, which starts:

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:"

Finally, a book I haven't read but which looks helpful:

Literature And Lore Of The Sea

[Tui]

I know Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Ancient Mariner off by heart. In my young days I would recite it while on night watches when I was voyaging in the Pacific Ocean under sail. It takes half an hour to recite it once, so if I did it four times, I would have done half of my four hour night watch. I could actually do that, recite it four times over and yet still not be tired of hearing myself say those beautiful words that he strung together to make that poem. It was a wonderful privilege to be sailing along far out of sight of land, saying words like . . .

"The fair breeze blew; the white foam flew
The furrow followed free
We were the first who ever burst
Into that silent sea."

Because when he wrote that verse, he was referring to the same ocean that I was sailing at that moment too - the Pacific.
I never tired of the dramatic sequences, nor the descriptions of the beauties and horrors of the ocean environment. It all sunk deep into my psyche and became my greatest literary influence.
I wonder if anyone else agrees with me about which verse in the poem has the most suspense. Anyone want to try and guess which one I think it is?

[Jojo]

thanks everyone! I'm going to check out your recommendations ;)

[Sara]

Tui wrote: "I know Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Ancient Mariner off by heart. In my young days I would recite it while on night watches when I was voyaging in the Pacific Ocean under sail. It takes half an hour t..."

This is a great story. I adore this poem, too. It flows like the ocean itself and has that grand mythical quality that I find completely irresistible. I'd say it's probably the best "sea-themed" poem out there.

[Sara]

Come to think of it, I think Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about the sea, too. Or with the sea as a major image...hmm.

I assume we're talking about poems with the sea as a major symbol, theme or image and not just one where the sea is mentioned?

[Tui]

There's the famous John Masefield one that begins:
"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.

I see its already been mentioned above. But that's just the first verse andt the whole poem makes me cry and puts the smell of salt and the sound of the wind in the rigging right into my brain and takes me back to my sailing days.

Here's the whole poem:
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8495913-Sea...

[Tui]

There must be something about sailing across the ocean, powered by nothing but the wind, that strikes a deep chord in a human that can never be healed or forgotten. It changes you. I live inland now, near the place of my birth (where perhaps every human belongs,) but I was seduced by the sea at a young age and will forever be torn between a love of my mountainous inland home and a longing for the ocean and its wondrous inhabitants; the world's wildest and most beautiful environment.
Poems and stories about it are my greatest solace and that's possibly why I can't stop writing about it.

[Carroll]

Tui, I couldn't agree with you more. I was a submarine sailor for 4 years in the US Navy and my captain said to me that the sea would call to me forever. I thought he was crazy. Now, 24 years after leaving the service, the sea still calls. There's not a cold, windy, rainy day that goes by that I don't think how wonderful it would be to be out at sea. She is a jealous mistress and will call all of us home one day.

[Tui]

I hear you Carroll. So glad there are people out there who understand.

[Kathy]

A lot of Sara Teasdale's poems are sea drenched.

There's also a Galway Kinnell poem (and I may have spelled his name wrong) called Spindrift (I think) that enchanted me a long long time ago when I came across it in an old New Yorker. I must have been all of 15 or 16.

Neruda's poems sometimes have a sense of the sea, particularly some of the 100 sonnets of love.

Did anyone mention Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach? It even sounds like the sea.

[Dodo]

Juanita Valentina wrote: "Hello, I'm looking for more poems with the sea theme, and also songs.

I`d suggest 'A Sea Dirge' from Phantasmagoria by Lewis Carroll, and perhaps 'The Sailor`s Wife', by the very same author.
;)

[Dodo]

Tui wrote: "I wonder if anyone else agrees with me about which verse in the poem has the most suspense. Anyone want to try and guess which one I think it is? "

The below, methinks:

'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-
Why look`st thou so?'-
With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.

Some might say it should be the skeleton ship with Life-In-Death aboard, but I wouldn`t quite agree...

[Feliks]

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez

The Old Man and the Sea

[withdrawn]

If you're still looking, a favourite poem of mine as a child was "Sir Patrick Spens", a wonderful sea ballad. It thoroughly grasped my imagination. One of the Childe Ballad collection.

[Lit Bug (Foram)]

Ariel's rendition 'Full fathom five below' in The Tempest.

[Aleksandar]

Song of an American Sailor

Now stop that crying, honey dear,
The Jackson Square remains still here
In sunny New Orleans
In lovely Louisiana.

She thinks me buried in the sea,
No longer does she wait for me
In sunny New Orleans
In lovely Louisiana.

The death ship is it I am in,
All I have lost, nothing to win
So far off sunny New Orleans
So far off lovely Louisiana.