By It is mysterious, beautiful and shrouded in a mist of sadness and passion at the same time. If you love the sea, the following verses left to us by these poets will fascinate you.
The writer Arthur C. Clarke said that it is absurd to call this planet “Earth”, when, in reality, most of it is ocean. This world of the depths, satined by waves, currents and dominated by tides, exerts an almost hypnotic attraction on human beings. Therefore, the following poems about the sea will not leave you indifferent.
His verses contain that subtle combination of melancholy and adventure, mysticism and passion. This universe is the protagonist of countless unforgettable novels and stories. Poets saw in it, from very early on, a powerful setting for metaphors and elegies. If you are passionate about marine poetry, this collection is a real treat for you.
Beautiful poems about the sea that your brain will love
Your brain likes poetry. We’re not the ones who say it, but science. A study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience describes that this literary genre is capable of producing very intense pleasurable emotions. What’s more, it activates your reward systems and the well-being you experience is different from what you feel, for example, when listening to music.
One way to further stimulate your nucleus accumbens is through poems about the sea by great authors . You too have surely felt that thrill of pleasure when admiring its immensity or breathing in its salty breeze. The incessant purring of its waves has inspired numerous famous poets, which we now show you.
1. The Evening Sea (Emily Dickinson)
Emily Dickinson wrote several poems with a marine theme, for example, As if the Sea should part or An Hour is a Sea . Despite not publishing any works during her lifetime, her short, emotional poetry achieved success after her death. She often used the ocean as a metaphor for eternity.
This is the land that the evening washes,These are the shores of the Yellow Sea;Where it rose, or whither it rushes,These are the mysteries of the West!Night after night its scarlet trafficscatters that splashdown with opal bullets;Merchants rock on the horizon,sink, and disappear with their magic sails.
2. Oh Captain! My Captain! (Walt Whitman)
O Captain! my Captain!our terrible voyage is ended;the ship has overcome all obstacles, the prize we sought is won;the port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exultant,while the eyes follow the steady keel, the sombre and bold ship:But, O Heart! Heart! Heart!O the bleeding red drops!Look, my Captain on the deck,he lies dead and cold!
3. Sea (Federico García Lorca)
The sea isthe Lucifer of blue.The sky fallenfor wanting to be the light.Poor sea condemnedto eternal movement,having previously beenstill in the firmament! But love redeemed youfrom your bitterness . You gave birth to pure Venus, and your depth remained virgin and painless. Your sorrows are beautiful, sea of glorious spasms. But today instead of stars you have greenish octopuses. Endure your suffering, formidable Satan. Christ walked for you, but so did Pan.
4. Sea Fever (John Masefield)
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 guide her;and the kick of the rudder and the song of the wind and the tremble of the white sail,and a grey mist upon the surface of the sea and a grey dawn breaking.
5. The sea, the sea (Rafael Alberti)
The sea. The sea.The sea. Only the sea!Why did you bring me, father,to the city?Why did you dig me upfrom the sea?In my dreams the wavestug at my heart;they would like to take it away.Father, why did you bring mehere?Groaning to see the sea,a little sailor on landhoists this lament into the air:Oh my sailor’s blouse;the wind always inflated itwhen I saw the jetty!
6. Crossing the bar ( Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Twilight and evening bell,and then darkness!And let there be no sadness at partingwhen I embark;For though out of our bound of time and placethe flood may carry me away,I hope to see my pilot face to facewhen I have crossed the bar.
7. The Sea (Jorge Luis Borges)
Hymn to the Sea is the first poem that Jorge Luis Borges published when he was twenty years old. It was in the magazine Grecia of Seville, in 1919. Its verses argue that the sea symbolizes the regeneration of the world, something that renews itself and, in turn, also transforms the people who contemplate it.
Before the dream (or terror) wovemythologies and cosmogonies,before time was minted in days,the sea, the ever sea, was already there and was.Who is the sea? Who is that violentand ancient being that gnaws at the pillarsof the earth and is one and many seasand abyss and splendor and chance and wind?Whoever looks at it sees it for the first time,always. With the wonder that elemental thingsleave, the beautifulevenings, the moon, the fire of a bonfire.Who is the sea, who am I? I will know on thenext day that follows the agony.
Poems about the sea and its mysteries, a channel of inspiration
The poems about the sea evoke the beauty, majesty and tranquility of this setting. Although something you will undoubtedly notice in the verses is an almost constant attempt to explore its darker and more mysterious aspects. Reading them will allow you to travel to a world of vastness and serenity full of inspiration. Enjoy more suggestions below.
8. Song of the Sea (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Eternal sea breezes,sea wind of the night:you come for no one;if someone should wake up,he must be preparedto outlive you.Eternal sea breezes,that seem to blow onlythe ancient rocks blown away,you are the purest spacecoming from afar…Oh, how to bear fruit!The fig tree feels your arrival.high up in the moonlight.
9. The Ocean (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
The Ocean has its silent caves,Deep, still, and alone;Though there be fury upon the waves,Beneath them there is none.The terrible spirits of the deephold their communion there;And there are those for whom we weep,The young, the bright, the fair.Quietly the weary mariners restBeneath their own blue sea. Theocean’s solitudes are blessed,for there is purity.The land hath guilt, the earth hath care,Unquiet are its graves;But quiet sleep is ever there,Beneath the dark blue waves.
10. Distant Sea (Pedro Salinas)
If it is not the sea, then it is its image,its stamp, turned, in the sky.If it is not the sea, then it is itsthin voice,across the wide world,on a loudspeaker, through the air.If it is not the sea, then it is its namein a language without lips,without a people,with no other word than this:sea.If it is not the sea, then it is its ideaof fire, unfathomable, clean;and I,burning, drowning in it.
11. To you I return, sea (José Saramago)
I return to you, sea, to the strong tasteof salt that the wind brings to my mouth,to your clarity, to this fatethat was given to me of forgetting deatheven knowing that life is short.I return to you, sea, stretched out body,to your power of peace and tempest,to your clamor of a chained god,surrounded by feminine earth,captive of freedom itself.I return to you, sea, as one who knowshow to take advantage of this lesson of yours.And before my life ends,with all the water that fits on earth,in a turned will, I will arm my chest.
12. The sea (Pablo Neruda)
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet who dedicated much of his work to his love for this natural element. For him, the sea was the greatest poem in the world, an inexhaustible passion and a life within a life.
I need the sea because it teaches me:I don’t know if I learn music or consciousness:I don’t know if it is a single wave or a deep beingor just a hoarse voice or a dazzlingsupposition of fish and ships.The fact is that even when I’m asleep Isomehow magnetically circlein the university of the waves.It’s not just the crushed shellsas if some trembling planetparticipated in the gradual death,no, from the fragment I reconstruct the day,from a streak of salt the stalactiteand from a spoonful the immense god.What it taught me before I keep. It is air,incessant wind, water and sand.It seems little to the young manwho came to live here with its fires,and yet the pulse that roseand fell to its abyss,the cold of the crackling blue,the crumbling of the star,the tender unfolding of the wavesquandering snow with foam,the quiet power, there, determinedlike a throne of stone in the depths,replaced the enclosure in which stubborn sadness grew, piling up oblivion,and abruptly changed my existence:I gave my adherence to pure movement.
13. Sail Away (Rabindranath Tagore)
Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail away in a ship,just you and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this ourpilgrimage to no land and no end.On that shoreless ocean,before your silently listening smile my songs would swell into melodies,free as the waves, free from all bondage of words.Has the time not yet come?Is there work yet to be done?Lo, evening has come to the shore, and in the gloom the sea-birds come flying to their nests.Who knows when the chains will be cast off?and the ship, like the last glow of evening,will disappear into the night?
14. Dover Beach (Mathew Arnold)
The tide is full, the moon is justover the straits; On the French coast the lightflashes and goes; the cliffs of England rise,gleaming and vast, in the still bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night air!alone, from the long line of spraywhere the sea meets the moon-whitened land.Listen! You hear the grating roarof pebbles that the waves draw back and cast,on their return, over the high shore;it begins, ceases, and then begins again,with slow tremulous cadence, and bringsthe eternal note of sorrow.Sophocles long agoheard it in the Aegean, and brought backto his mind the turbid ebb and flowof human misery; wefind in the sound, too, a thought,hearing it over this far northern sea.
Marine poetry, a metaphor for the immensity of existence
The sea, with its waves , its immensity and power, is associated with the idea of the eternal and the ephemeral. Marine poets use this element as a symbol of life and death, in order to reflect on the transience of existence. Poems about the sea will never cease to be written as long as there are minds and hearts capable of emotion and reflection.
15. On the seashore he had (Salvador Espriu)
By the sea. I hada house, my dream,by the seaHigh prows. On freewater paths, the slenderboat that I guided.The eyes knewthe rest and orderof a small homeland.I need to tell youhow scary the rain ison the windows.Todaythe dark night falls on my house.The black rocksattract me to the shipwreck.Prisoner of the song,my useless effort,who guides me towards the dawn?By the sea I hada house, my dream.
16. Facing the sea (Alfonsina Storni)
In this piece, the Argentine poetess metaphorically symbolizes the wounded heart. She feels sunken, like the ship that lies in the depths, but she appeals to the strength of the ocean to offer her its anger and rage. The sea represents, once again, the most complex emotions of the human being.
Oh sea, enormous sea, fierce heartof uneven rhythm, evil heart,I am softer than that poor stickthat rots in your waves, prisoner.Oh sea, give me your tremendous anger,I spent my life forgiving,because I understood, sea, I gave myself:”Pity, pity for the one who offends the most.”Vulgarity, vulgarity harasses me.Ah, they have bought me the city and the man.Make me have your anger without name:This mission of rose already tires me.Do you see the vulgar? That vulgar person saddens me,I lack air and where it is lacking I stay,I would like not to understand, but I can’t:it is vulgarity that poisons me.I became poor because understanding overwhelms,I became poor because understanding suffocates,Blessed be the strength of the rock!I have a heart like foam.
17. The sea is an oblivion (Jorge Guillén)
The sea is a forgetfulness,a song, a lip;the sea is a lover,a faithful response to desire.It is like a nightingale,and its waters are feathers,impulses that lift upthe cold stars.Its caresses are dreams,they open up death,they are accessible moons,they are the highest life.On dark shouldersthe waves go enjoying themselves.
18. Marina (Paul Verlaine)
The moon envelops herchimerical death face in crepeand the sea pulsates.Suddenly asinister and brutal lightning boltsplits the purple skyin a long zigzag.The convulsive wavesjump without ceasing;they roar, they phosphoresceand they come and go.In the distancethe hurricane whistlesand the furiesof the tempest roar.
19. Tomorrow (Cesare Pavese)
The half-closed window frames a faceagainst the sea. The beautiful hairaccompanies the tender rhythm of the sea.There are no memories in this face.Only a fleeting shadow, like clouds.The shadow is moist and sweet like the sandof an intact cave, under the twilight.There are no memories. Only a whisperthat is the voice of the sea turned into memory.At twilight, the soft water of dawn,which is impregnated with light, illuminates the face.Every day is a timeless miracle,under the sun: it is impregnated with a salty lightand a taste of vivid seafood.
20. Event (Gloria Fuertes)
Castaway without sails,orphan of port,ship without a rudder.Surrounded by water and thirsty,I am surrounded by fish and hungry,surrounded by waves and without greetings,surrounded by dollars and naked.
21. The Seagulls Argue (Derek Walcott)
Gulls argue with the spray of the waves, while the frigatebirdscircle for hours, in a flutter of wings, around the reefwhere a pontoon rusts. A year has ended its storms, and menin fear have shielded lives like lanterns from its gales,or fallen together into bonfires. But now blue spaces open likecracks in smoke, birds fold into crevices of rockswhose sand has been raked with footprints. The sea,which prides itself on no man marking it,still offers such places for the selfish pen,and the coral island of the brain has places where thepolyp’s republic was built for us – hypnotized cavesthat wave in the light of the wave, rockroses that whitenwith growing indifference driftwood or ships that have foundered.
22. The sad sea (Antonio Machado)
A steel sea of grey waves beatswithin the rough, eroded wallsof the old port. The north wind blowsand ripples the sea. The sad sea lullsa bitter illusion with its grey waves.The north wind ripples the sea, and the sea lashesthe port wall.The evening closes on thecloudy horizon. Above the steel seathere is a leaden sky.The red brig is a bloody ghost, above the sea, which the sea shakes…The north wind hums mournfully and whistles sadlyin the sour lyre of the strong rigging.The red brig is a ghostthat the wind stirs and rocks the rippled sea,the rough, rippled sea of grey waves.
The sea, a window to introspection
Poetry about the sea provides a window to contemplation, reflection and connection with nature. Throughout history it has served as a source of inspiration for countless poets and novelists. However, the world of poetry has the peculiar virtue of crossing deeper psychological layers to move you.
We hope you enjoyed these suggestions and that you don’t hesitate to delve deeper into the work of these authors. You will discover that they have more poems on this subject. Because whoever falls in love with the ocean never recovers from this spell and needs to return to it frequently. Perhaps the same happens to you.
Literature
All sources cited were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, timeliness and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Wassiliwizky, E., Koelsch, S., Wagner, V., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2017). The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 12 (8), 1229-1240. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597896/