111 Poems about Water to Feel the Power of Tenderness and Silence

Water is a powerful force of nature that can evoke feelings of tenderness, peace, and silence.

Poets have been inspired by the majesty of water for centuries, and their words can transport us to its depths and help us feel its power.

From the calm serenity of a still lake to the roar of a thunderous waterfall, poems about water capture the essence of this life-sustaining element in all its forms.

Let’s explore a variety of water poems that celebrate the beauty, mystery, and power of water in all its forms.

You May Also Be Interested In:

• beach poems
• poems about mountains
• wind poems

Famous Poems about Water

Discover the timeless beauty of water through the eyes of renowned poets who have captured its essence in their iconic works in these famous water poems.

1. Southampton Water

       by Rg Gregory

song of sea-leaves in an orchestra of foam

branches of violins sprayed across the mind

what is magnetic in a wave breaking white

drawing the chords of evening to a single sound

I would liken your hair to a slow movement

of seagulls in the wind catching my eye

by sheer virtue of design – I could nest there

as naturally as the anemones nest in the sea

in a promontory of thought I might mistake

the sea-air for a hand brushing my face

for the breeze I think is not so fleshless

nor your fingers so earthy as the rose

and then like an expansion in the blood

sometimes in the restless reflections of the boat

leaning in company across the rail I feel

another sea coming in at the elbows of your coat

2. Grounded in the Water

       by Raymond A. Foss

All of life’s problems bleed away

when I get grounded in the water.

Grounded in the love of God

the never ending wellspring of life

poured out for all who would drink

draw in the energy, the love, the grace

of God’s gifts, freely given

like the woman at the well

we ask for the cup to be filled

for our thirst to be quenched,

without having to walk to the well

thirsty and tired, hot and tired

wanting, needing that water

grounding our faith

strengthening our sprits

to do his work

3. Water and Judgement

       by Alexander Julian

A political person will probably ask you,

“Do you take a glass half full, or, half empty?

This question is political.

But, it’s a cliche.

Let me explain:

A glass of water.

Half full, or, half empty?

Do you see it half full, or, do you see it half empty?

I must stop you before you take the water.

Do you even know what the “water” is?

This is very important!

Let me ask a question:

Do you know what the “water” is?

What is the water?

What is the water made of?

Where does the water come from?

How does the water look?

Is this “water” healthy?

Who is giving you the water?

Do you know what the water quality is?

Unless you know what the “water” is, you should not drink it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s half full, or, half empty.

You need to know what the “water” is first.

What if the water is not healthy for drinking?

What if the “water” is not healthy for philosophy?

What if the “water” is not healthy for science?

The water must be healthy.

A glass of water.

Half full, or, half empty.

Do I take it?

Well, if the water is not healthy, no thank you.

You are going to ask me,

“Are you positive, or, are you negative?”

That question doesn’t matter yet.

I need more information about the “water” for safety concerns.

Water should be healthy.

Half full, or, half empty?

Doesn’t matter.

The water needs to be healthy first.

Or else, my attitude would always be confusion, positive or negative.

“Half full, or, half empty?

The question is pointless unless I know what the water is.

To have good judgement, I must drink good water.

Size and portion are of little concern.

Water quality is more important.

Think about it!

Should you drink a full glass of dirty water?

Or, should you just take a sip of clean, fresh water from Hawaii?

Having more water only helps if the water is even good.

If a full glass of water is not healthy, your “optimistic” view is lowest.

You should have optimistic attitude for quality, not quantity.

The “half full or half empty” cliche is really a bad question.

4. Water into Water

       by Jim Yerman

I recently left some water on the table…only half a cup

but I was thirty so I took the water pitcher and quickly filled it up…

As I poured water into water it became obvious to me

when the water from the pitcher met the water from the cup…

they blended easily.

And once the two waters joined together

once they were completely blended

I could not tell where one water began

and where the other water ended.

And I thought it doesn’t matter where this water comes from

out of my spigot or across the sea

when I pour water into water…they blend so easily.

And I thought it doesn’t matter the color of the waters

because it’s easy to comprehend

when water is mixed with water…

how easily they blend.

In fact the colors blend quite beautifully

without having to be taught

when one water is a color…and the other one is not.

When two colors of water come together

both colors are transformed…

and from two separate colors

a new color is formed….

It led me to think about water…and humans

and it suddenly occurred to me

If humans are mostly made up of water

shouldn’t we blend more easily?

5. Going for Water

       by Robert Frost

The well was dry beside the door,

And so we went with pail and can

Across the fields behind the house

To seek the brook if still it ran;

Not loth to have excuse to go,

Because the autumn eve was fair

(Though chill), because the fields were ours,

And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon

That slowly dawned behind the trees,

The barren boughs without the leaves,

Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused

Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,

Ready to run to hiding new

With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand

To listen ere we dared to look,

And in the hush we joined to make

We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,

A slender tinkling fall that made

Now drops that floated on the pool

Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

6. To an Isle in the Water

       by William Butler Yeats

Shy one, shy one,

Shy one of my heart,

She moves in the firelight

pensively apart.

She carries in the dishes,

And lays them in a row.

To an isle in the water

with her would I go?

With catries in the candles,

And lights the curtained room,

Shy in the doorway

And shy in the gloom;

And shy as a rabbit,

Helpful and shy.

To an isle in the water

with her would I fly?

7. Spirit Song Over the Waters

       by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The soul of man

Resembleth water:

From heaven it cometh,

To heaven it soareth.

And then again

To earth descendeth,

Changing ever.

Down from the lofty

Rocky wall

Streams the bright flood,

Then spreadeth gently

In cloudy billows

O’er the smooth rock,

And welcomed kindly,

Veiling, on roams it,

Soft murmuring,

Tow’rd the abyss.

Cliffs projecting

Oppose its progress,–

Angrily foams it

Down to the bottom,

Step by step.

Now, in flat channel,

Through the meadowland steals it,

And in the polish’d lake

Each constellation

Joyously peepeth.

Wind is the loving

Wooer of waters;

Wind blends together

Billows all-foaming.

Spirit of man,

Thou art like unto water!

Fortune of man,

Thou art like unto wind!

8. The Shadowy Waters: The Harp of Aengus

       by William Butler Yeats

Edain came out of Midhir’s hill, and lay

Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass,

Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds

And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,

And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made

Of opal and ruhy and pale chrysolite

Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,

Sweet with all music, out of his long hair,

Because her hands had been made wild by love.

When Midhir’s wife had changed her to a fly,

He made a harp with Druid apple-wood

That she among her winds might know he wept;

And from that hour he has watched over none

But faithful lovers.

9. The Old Men Admiring Themselves in The Water

       by William Butler Yeats

I heard the old, old men say,

‘Everything alters,

And one by one we drop away.’

They had hands like claws, and their knees

were twisted like the old thorn-trees

By the waters.

I heard the old, old men say,

‘All that’s beautiful drifts away

Like the waters.

10. Where Once the Waters of Your Face

       by Dylan Thomas

Where once the waters of your face

Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows,

The dead turns up its eye;

Where once the mermen through your ice

Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers

Through salt and root and roe.

Where once your green knots sank their splice

Into the tided cord, there goes

The green unraveller,

His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose

To cut the channels at their source

And lay the wet fruits low.

Invisible, your clocking tides

Break on the love beds of the weeds;

The weed of love’s left dry;

There round about your stones the shades

Of children go who, from their voids,

Cry to the dolphin sea.

Dry as a tomb, your colored lids

Shall not be latched while magic glides

Sage on the earth and sky;

There shall be corals in your beds

There shall be serpents in your tides,

Till all our sea-faiths die.

11. The Water’s Chant

       by Philip Levine

Seven years ago I went into

the High Sierras stunned by the desire

to die. for hours I stared into a clear

mountain stream that fell down

over speckled rocks, and then I

closed my eyes and prayed that when

I opened them I would be gone

and somewhere a purple and golden

thistle would overflow with light.

I had not played since I was a child

and at first I felt foolish saying

the name of God, and then it became

another word. All the while

I could hear the water’s chant

below my voice. At last I opened

my eyes to the same place, my hands

cupped and I drank long from

the stream, and then turned for home

not even stopping to find the thistle

that blazed by my path.

Since then

I have gone home to the city

of my birth and found it gone,

a gray and treeless one now in its place.

The one house I loved the most

simply missing in a row of houses,

the park where I napped on summer days

fenced and locked, the great shop

where we forged, a plane of rubble,

the old hurt faces turned away.

My brother was with me, thickened

by the years, but still my brother,

and when we embraced I felt the rough

cheek and his hand upon my back tapping

as though to tell me, I know! I know!

Brother, I know!

Here in California

a new day begins. Full dull clouds ride

in from the sea, and this dry valley

calls out for rain. My brother has

risen hours ago and hobbled to the shower

and gone out into the city of death

to trade his life for nothing because

this is the world. I could pray now,

but not to die, for that will come one

day or another. I could pray for

his bad leg or my son John whose luck

is rotten, or for four new teeth, but

instead I watch my eucalyptus,

the giant in my front yard, bucking

and swaying in the wind and hear its

tidal roar. in the strange new light

the leaves overflow purple and gold,

and a fiery dust showers into the day.

Spiritual Poems about Water

Explore the spiritual and transcendent aspects of water through poetry that reflects on its role in our lives and its connection to the divine in these spiritual water poems.

1. Consummation of Grief

       by Charles Bukowski

I even hear the mountains

the way they laugh

up and down their blue sides

and down in the water

the fish cry

and the water

is their tears.

I listen to the water

on nights I drink away

and the sadness becomes so great

I hear it in my clock

it becomes knobs upon my dresser

it becomes paper on the floor

it becomes a shoehorn

a laundry ticket

it becomes

cigarette smoke

climbing a chapel of dark vines . . .

it matters little

very little love is not so bad

or very little life

what counts

is waiting on walls

I was born for this

I was born to hustle roses down

The avenues of the dead.

2. Sleep in the Arms of God

       by Dr. Antony Theodore

On the banks of Ganges

I sat in a serene and somber mood

Looking at the playful water

as the wind like a great artist

draws playful lines and circles

on the water.

The wind

tickles the water

and it laughs although I can’t hear.

When the water laughs

and jumps, it moves

in lines and circles

and then rushes swift to the shore.

I sit there at the shore

with my feet in the water

and watch the lines and circles

Reach and kiss my feet

in reverent love.

The wind is playful today

and comes to my lips

with a cold feathery touch

and caresses my hair and I feel alive.

It tells me about the sweet words

Uttered by lovers on the shore

sharing their intimate feelings.

Tonight I shall dream

of the symphony of the dancers

and as in a fairy tale

the lovers will come on this shore,

Kiss a thousand kisses

Tell love stories,

Smile and lie on the lap of each other.

I wish you, lovers of this shore

Bliss, serenity and peace.

Sleep here lovingly

the night through.

Let the glorious moon

Pour its mild heavenly light on you.

Sleep together lovingly in the arms of God.

3. Any Soul That Drank the Nectar

       by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Any soul that drank the nectar of your passion was lifted.

From that water of life he is in a state of elation.

Death came, smelled me, and sensed your fragrance instead.

From then on, death lost all hope of me.

4. Along the Sun-Drenched Roadside

       by Rainer Maria Rilke

Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the great

hollow half-tree trunk, which for generations

has been a trough, renewing in itself

an inch or two of rain, I satisfy

my thirst: taking the water’s pristine coolness

into my whole body through my wrists.

Drinking would be too powerful, too clear;

but this unhurried gesture of restraint

fills my whole consciousness with shining water.

Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied

to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,

lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.

5. I Ask My Mother to Sing

       by Li-Young Lee

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.

Mother and daughter sing like young girls.

If my father were alive, he would play

his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,

nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch

the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers

running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;

how the water lilies fill with rain until

they overturn, spilling water into water,

then rock back, and fill with more,

both women have begun to cry.

But neither stops her song.

6. Silence Is the Entrance

       by Sylvia Frances Chan

Below the water surface

I put down my foundations

to build a house

with a tiny room

I can work, is never disturbed

Below the water surface

I see my inside

peculiar, the doors are mirror

I see myself knocking on the door

Below the water surface

I have just lost my way

suddenly there is a door open

the main gate of my soul

Below the water surface

I see my inside

silence is the absolute must

to the main gate to open,

the mirrors to remove

and so I see myself go inside

Nice to be there

nice to be in place to

Heaven in order to remain

in the interior, in this huge silence

have you met me, you raise me

with your love…

Silence is the Entrance

to the deepest me….

7. Water the Garden

       by Robert Hilary

Water the garden.

Where your soul plants seed.

Water the roots that ground you.

Water the soil that provides the nutrients for the soul. Water what surrounds you. Water your dreams that take you where you want to go

Water the goals that inspire how you grow.

Water the branches that spread your presence into the world. Water the flowers. The fruits your presence sows.

Water the base, for your foundation to be strong.

Water your soul. Know that you belong.

Water your being. Every aspect deserves your love.

Water is a metaphor for what nurtures and bestows.

Water your blessings. And blessings will grow.

8. Water

       by Wendell Berry

I was born in a drought year. That summer

my mother waited in the house, enclosed

in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,

for the men to come back in the evenings,

bringing water from a distant spring.

Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.

And all my life I have dreaded the return

of that year, sure that it still is

somewhere, like a dead enemy’s soul.

Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,

and I am the faithful husband of the rain,

I love the water of wells and springs

and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise

of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.

My sweetness is to wake in the night

after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

9. Hayes Water

       by Matthew Arnold

A region desolate and wild.

Black, chafing water: and afloat,

And lonely as a truant child

In a waste wood, a single boat:

No mast, no sails are set thereon;

It moves, but never moved on:

And welters like a human thing

Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,

Far down the torrent cleaves its way:

In front the dumb rock rises steep,

A fretted wall of blue and grey;

Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone

With many a wild weed overgrown:

All else, black water: and afloat,

One rood from shore, that single boat.

10. Water

       by Robert Lowell

It was a Maine lobster town—

each morning boatloads of hands

pushed off for granite

quarries on the islands,

and left dozens of bleak

white frame houses stuck

like oyster shells

on a hill of rock,

and below us, the sea lapped

the raw little match-stick

mazes of a weir,

where the fish for bait were trapped.

Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.

From this distance in time

it seems the color

of iris, rotting and turning purpler,

but it was only

the usual gray rock

turning the usual green

when drenched by the sea.

The sea drenched the rock

at our feet all day,

and kept tearing away

flake after flake.

One night you dreamed

you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,

and trying to pull

off the barnacles with your hands.

We wished our two souls

might return like gulls

to the rock. in the end,

the water was too cold for us.

Funny Poems about Water

Dive into the lighthearted side with interesting poems about water that bring humor and wit to its many forms and functions.

1. How to Paint A Water Lily

       by Ted Hughes

To Paint a Water Lily

A green level of lily leaves

Roofs the pond’s chamber and paves

The flies’ furious arena: study

These, the two minds of this lady.

First observe the air’s dragonfly

That eats meat, that bullets by

Or stands in space to take aim;

Others as dangerous comb the hum

Under the trees. There are battle-shouts

And death-cries everywhere hereabouts

But inaudible, so the eyes praise

To see the colours of these flies

Rainbow their arcs, spark, or settle

Cooling like beads of molten metal

Through the spectrum. Think what worse

is the pond-bed’s matter of course;

Prehistoric bedroomed times

Crawl that darkness with Latin names,

Have evolved no improvements there,

Jaws for heads, the set stare,

Ignorant of age as of hour—

Now paint the long-necked lily-flower

Which, deep in both worlds, can be still

As a painting, trembling hardly at all

Though the dragonfly alight,

Whatever horror nudge her root.

2. The Blue Water Buffalo

       by Marilyn L. Taylor

On both sides of the screaming highway, the world

is made of emerald silk—sumptuous bolts of it,

stitched by threads of water into cushions

that shimmer and float on the Mekong’s munificent glut.

In between them plods the ancient buffalo—dark blue

in the steamy distance, and legless

where the surface of the ditch dissects

the body from its waterlogged supports below

or it might be a woman, up to her thighs

in the lukewarm ooze, bending at the waist

with the plain grace of habit, delving for weeds

in water that receives her wrist and forearm

as she feels for the alien stalk, the foreign blade

beneath that greenest of green coverlets

where brittle pods in their corroding skins

now shift, waiting to salt the fields with horror.

3. Baptismal Waters

       by Raymond A. Foss

Two pitchers, two bowls

Two pair of hands

of the pastor and the proconsul

Metaphorical markers of a life well spent

Water poured ritually from pitcher to bowl

hear it clatter and swirl

Close your eyes, feel the liquid on your skin

as you are preacher or Pilate

One dips his hands into the living water

rests them on His head in blessing, a sacrament

The counterpart cups his hands in the deep

washes his hands of him

gives the Son over to the mob,

in verdict and fulfillment

4. Holy Water

       by Raymond A. Foss

The divine was revealed

made clean, prepared, anointed

not with a crown;

but with water

not in the Temple

but in the Jordan,

in the wilderness

Submitting to an act of trust,

a washing away of sin

in supplication and fulfillment

to begin his own journey

his mission, his fate

our savior.

5. Ducks Bobbing on the Water

       by Kobayashi Lssa

Ducks bobbing on the water–

are they also, tonight,

hoping to get lucky?

6. The Boiling Water

       by Kenneth Koch

A serious moment for the water is

when it boils

And though one usually regards it

merely as a convenience

To have the boiling water

available for bath or table

Occasionally there is someone

around who understands

The importance of this moment

for the water—maybe a saint,

Maybe a poet, maybe a crazy

man, or just someone

temporarily disturbed

With his mind “floating”in a

sense, away from his deepest

Personal concerns to more

“unreal” things…

A serious moment for the island

is when its trees

Begin to give it shade, and

another is when the ocean

washes

Big heavy things against its side.

One walks around and looks at

the island

But not really at it, at what is on

it, and one thinks,

It must be serious, even, to be this

island, at all, here.

Since it is lying here exposed to

the whole sea. All its

Moments might be serious. It is

serious, in such windy weather,

to be a sail

Or an open window, or a feather

flying in the street…

Seriousness, how often I have

thought of seriousness

And how little I have understood

it, except this: serious is urgent

And it has to do with change. You

say to the water,

It’s not necessary to boil now,

and you turn it off. It stops

Fidgeting. And starts to cool. You

put your hand in it

And say, The water isn’t serious

any more. It has the potential,

However—that urgency to give

off bubbles, to

Change itself to steam. And the

wind,

When it becomes part of a

hurricane, blowing up the

beach

And the sand dunes can’t keep it

away.

Fainting is one sign of

seriousness, crying is another.

Shuddering all over is another

one.

A serious moment for the

telephone is when it rings.

And a person answers, it is

Angelica, or is it you.

A serious moment for the fly is

when its wings

Are moving, and a serious

moment for the duck

Is when it swims, when it first

touches water, then spreads

Its smile upon the water…

A serious moment for the match

is when it burst into flame…

Serious for me that I met you, and

serious for you

That you met me, and that we do

not know

If we will ever be close to anyone

again. Serious the recognition

of the probability

That we will, although time

stretches terribly in

between…

7. Water Lilies

       by Sara Teasdale

If you have forgotten water lilies floating

On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,

If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,

Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever

To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,

There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies,

And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

8. The Swan at Edgewater Park

       by Ruth L. Schwartz

Isn’t one of your prissy rich peoples’ swans

Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond

Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms

in its tidal fringe

Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck

into the body of a Great Lake,

Swilling whatever it is swans swill,

Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,

While Clevelanders walk by saying Look

at that big duck!

Beauty isn’t the point here; of course

the swan is beautiful,

But not like Lorie at 16, when

Everything was possible–no

More like Lorie at 27

Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,

Her kid with asthma watching TV,

The boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna

Leave him, washing his car out back–and

He’s a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and

It’s not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he

Really does, he loves them both–

That’s the kind of swan this is.

9. Out of The Water Colored Window, When You Look

       by Delmore Schwartz

When from the water colored window idly you look

Each is but and clear to see, not steep:

So does the neat print in an actual book

Marching as if to true conclusion, reap

The illimitable blue immensely overhead,

The night of the living and the day of the dead.

I drive in an auto all night long to reach

The apple which has sewed the sunlight up:

My simple self is nothing but the speech

Pleading for the overflow of that great cup,

The darkened body, the mind still as a frieze:

All else is merely means as complex as disease!

10. Half-Ballad of Waterval

       by Rudyard Kipling

(Non-commissioned Officers in Charge of Prisoners)

When by the labor of my ‘ands

I’ve ‘elped to pack a transport tight

with prisoners for foreign lands,

I ain’t transported with delight.

I know it’s only just an’ right,

But yet it somehow sickens me,

For I ‘ave learned at Waterval

The mean in’ of captivity.

Behind the pegged barb-wire strands,

Beneath the tall electric light,

We used to walk in bare-‘ead bands,

Explain in’ ‘ow we lost our fight;

An’ that is what they’ll do to-night

Upon the steamer out at sea,

If I ‘ave learned at Waterval

The mean in’ of captivity.

They’ll never know the shame that brands–

Black shame no liven” down makes white–

The mock in’ from the sentry-stands,

The women’s laugh, the gaoler’s spite.

We are too bloom in’-much polite,

But that is ‘ow I’d ‘ave us be . . .

Since I ‘ave learned at Waterval

The mean in’ of captivity.

They’ll get those draggin” days all right,

Spent as a foreigner commands,

An’ ‘orrors of the locked-up night,

With ‘Ell’s own think in” on their ‘ands.

I’d give the gold o’ twenty Rands

(If it was mine) to set ’em free

For I ‘ave learned at Waterval

The mean in’ of captivity!

Short Poems about Water

Get a quick dose of inspiration with verses that convey the beauty and power of water in just a few lines. Let’s read some short poetries about water.

1. Water

       by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water understands

Civilization well;

It wets my foot, but prettily,

It chills my life, but wittily,

It is not disconcerted,

It is not broken-hearted:

Well used, it decketh joy,

Adorneth, doubleth joy:

Ill-used, it will destroy,

In perfect time and measure

With a face of golden pleasure

Elegantly destroy.

2. The Peace of Wild Things

       by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. for a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

3. Autumn River Song

       by Li Po

The moon shimmers in green water.

White herons fly through the moonlight.

The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:

into the night, singing, they paddle home together.

4. In the Wave-Strike Over Unquiet Stones

       by Pablo Neruda

In the wave-strike over unquiet stones

the brightness bursts and bears the rose

and the ring of water contracts to a cluster

to one drop of azure brine that falls.

O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,

magnetic voyager whose death flowers

and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:

shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.

Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence

while the sea destroys its continual forms,

collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,

because in the weft of those unseen garments

of headlong water, and perpetual sand,

we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.

5. Sea Calm

       by Langston Hughes

How still,

how strangely still

the water is today,

it is not good

for water

to be so still that way.

6. A Paumanok Picture

       by Walt Whitman

Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,

Ten fishermen waiting- they discover a thick school of mossbonkers-

they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,

The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the

beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,

The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,

Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-deep

in the water, pois’d on strong legs,

The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,

Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,

the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.

7. An Old Pond

       by Matsuo Basho

Old pond…..

A frog leaps in

water’s sound

8. Any Lifetime

       by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master

is either death in disguise or a deep sleep.

The water that pollutes you is poison;

the poison that purifies you is water.

9. Awake at Night

       by Matsuo Basho

Awake at night–

the sound of the water jar

cracking in the cold.

10. Water Makes Many Beds

       by Emily Dickinson

Water makes many Beds

for those averse to sleep —

Its awful chamber open stands —

Its Curtains blandly sweep —

Abhorrent is the Rest

in undulating Rooms

Whose Amplitude no end invades —

Whose Axis never comes.

Long Poems about Water

Immerse yourself in the immersive world of water with epic works that explore its many facets and implications in depth. Let’s discover some long poetries about water.

1. The Water-Nymph

       by Alexander Pushkin

In lakeside leafy groves, a friar

Escaped all worries; there he passed

His summer days in constant prayer,

Deep studies and eternal fast.

Already with a humble shovel

The elder dug himself a grave –

As, calling saints to bless his hovel,

Death – nothing other – did he crave.

So once, upon a falling night, he

Was bowing by his wilted shack

With meekest prayer to the Almighty.

The grove was turning slowly black;

Above the lake a mist was lifting;

Through milky clouds across the sky

The ruddy moon was softly drifting,

When water drew the friar’s eye…

He’s looking puzzled, full of trouble,

Of fear he cannot quite explain,

He sees the waves begin to bubble

And suddenly grow calm again.

Then — white as first snow in the highlands,

Light-footed as nocturnal shade,

There comes ashore, and sits in silence

Upon the bank, a naked maid.

She eyes the monk and brushes gently

Her hair, and water off her arms.

He shakes with fear and looks intently

At her, and at her lovely charms.

With eager hand she waves and beckons,

Nods quickly, smiles as from afar

And shoots, within two flashing seconds,

Into still water like a star.

The glum old man slept not an instant;

All day, not even once he prayed:

Before his eyes still hung and glistened

The wondrous, the relentless shade…

The grove puts on its gown of nightfall;

The moon walks on the cloudy floor;

And there’s the maiden – pale, delightful,

Reclining on the spellbound shore.

She looks at him, her hair she brushes,

Blows airy kisses, gestures wild,

Plays with the waves – caresses, splashes –

Now laughs, now whimpers like a child,

Moans tenderly, calls louder, louder…

“Come, monk, come, monk! to me, to me!..”

Then – disappears in limpid water,

And all is silent instantly…

On the third day the zealous hermit

Was sitting by the shore, in love,

Awaiting the delightful mermaid,

As shade was covering the grove…

Dark ceded to the sun’s emergence;

Our monk had wholly disappeared –

Before a crowd of local urchins,

While fishing, found his hoary beard.

2. Water, is Taught by Thirst.

      by Emily Dickinson

Water, is taught by thirst.

Land — by the Oceans passed.

Transport — by throe —

Peace — by its battles told —

Love, by Memorial Mold —

Birds, by the Snow.

3. The Battle of Waterloo

       by William Topaz Mcgonagall

T was in the year 1815, and on the 18th day of June,

That British cannon, against the French army, loudly did boom,

Upon the ever memorable bloody field of Waterloo;

Which Napoleon remembered while in St. Helena, and bitterly did rue.

The morning of the 18th was gloomy and cheerless to behold,

But the British soon recovered from the severe cold

That they had endured the previous rainy night;

And each man prepared to burnish his arms for the coming fight.

Then the morning passed in mutual arrangements for battle,

And the French guns, at half-past eleven, loudly did rattle;

And immediately the order for attack was given,

Then the bullets flew like lightning till the Heaven’s seemed riven.

The place from which Bonaparte viewed the bloody field

Was the farmhouse of La Belle Alliance, which some protection did yield;

And there he remained for the most part of the day,

Pacing to and fro with his hands behind him in doubtful dismay.

The Duke of Wellington stood upon a bridge behind La Haye,

And viewed the British army in all their grand array,

And where danger threatened most the noble Duke was found

In the midst of shot and shell on every side around.

Hougemont was the key of the Duke of Wellington’s position,

A spot that was naturally very strong, and a great acqusition

To the Duke and his staff during the day,

Which the Cold stream Guards held to the last, without dismay.

The French 2nd Corps were principally directed during the day

To carry Hougemont farmhouse without delay;

So the farmhouse in quick succession they did attack,

But the British guns on the heights above soon drove them back.

But still the heavy shot and shells ploughed through the walls;

Yet the brave Guards resolved to hold the place no matter what befalls;

And they fought manfully to the last, with courage unshaken,

Until the tower of Hougemont was in a blaze but still it remained untaken.

By these desperate attacks Napoleon lost ten thousand men,

And left them weltering in their gore like sheep in a pen;

And the British lost one thousand men– which wasn’t very great,

Because the great Napoleon met with a crushing defeat.

The advance of Napoleon on the right was really very fine,

Which was followed by a general onset upon the British line,

In which three hundred pieces of artillery opened their cannonade;

But the British artillery played upon them, and great courage displayed.

For ten long hours it was a continued succession of attacks;

Whilst the British cavalry charged them in all their drawbacks;

And the courage of the British Army was great in square at Waterloo,

Because hour after hour they were mowed down in numbers not a few.

At times the temper of the troops had very nearly failed,

Especially amongst the Irish regiments who angry railed;

And they cried: ” When will we get at them? Show us the way

That we may avenge the death of our comrades without delay”

“But be steady and cool, my brave lads,” was their officers’ command,

While each man was ready to charge with gun in hand;

Oh, Heaven! if was pitiful to see their comrades lying around,

Dead and weltering in their gore, and cumbering the ground.

It was a most dreadful sight to behold,

Heaps upon heaps of dead men lying stiff and cold;

While the cries of the dying was lamentable to hear;

And for the loss of their comrades many a soldier shed a tear.

Men and horses fell on every aide around,

Whilst heavy cannon shot tore up the ground;

And musket balls in thousands flew,

And innocent blood bedewed the field of Waterloo.

Methinks I see the solid British square,

Whilst the shout of the French did rend the air,

As they rush against the square of steel.

Which forced them back and made them reel.

And when a gap was made in that square,

The cry of “Close up! Close up!” did rend the air,

“And charge them with your bayonets, and make them fly!

And Scotland forever! Be the cry.”

The French and British closed in solid square,

While the smoke of the heavy cannonade darkened the air;

Then the noble Picton deployed his division into line,

And drove back the enemy in a very short time.

Then Lord Anglesey seized on the moment, and charging with the Greys,

Whilst the in skilling’s burst through everything, which they did always;

Then the French infantry fell in hundreds by the swords of the Dragoons;

Whilst the thundering of the cannonade loudly booms.

And the Eagles of the 45th and 105th were all captured that day,

And upwards of 2000 prisoners, all in grand array;

But, alas! at the head of his division, the noble Picton fell,

While the Highlanders played a lament for him they loved so well.

Then the French cavalry receded from the square they couldn’t penetrate,

Still Napoleon thought to weary the British into defeat;

But when he saw his columns driven back in dismay,

He cried, “How beautifully these English fight, but they must give way.”

And well did British bravery deserve the proud encomium,

Which their enduring courage drew from the brave Napoleon;

And when the close column of infantry came on the British square,

Then the British gave one loud cheer which did rend the air.

Then the French army pressed forward at Napoleon’s command,

Determined, no doubt, to make a bold stand;

Then Wellington cried, ” Up Guards and break their ranks through,

And chase the French invaders from off the field of Waterloo!”

Then, in a moment, they were all on their feet,

And they met the French, sword in hand, and made them retreat;

Then Wellington in person directed the attack,

And at every point and turning the French were beaten back.

And the road was choked and encumbered with the dead;

And, unable to stand the charge, the French instantly fled,

And Napoleon’s army of yesterday was now a total wreck,

Which the British manfully for ten long hours held in check.

Then, panic-struck, the French were forced to yield,

And Napoleon turned his charger’s head, and fled from the field,

With his heart full of woe, no doubt

Exclaiming, “Oh, Heaven! my noble army has met with a total rout!”

4. The Humble Petition of Bruar Water

      by Robert Burns

MY lord, I know your noble ear

Woe ne’er assails in vain;

Emboldened thus, I beg you’ll hear

Your humble slave complain,

How saucy Phoebus’ scorching beams,

In flaming summer-pride,

Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,

And drink my crystal tide.

The lightly-jumping, glowrin’ trouts,

That thro’ my waters play,

If, in their random, wanton spouts,

They near the margin stray;

If, hapless chance! they linger lang,

I’m scorching up so shallow,

They’re left the whitening stanes amang,

In gasping death to wallow.

Last day I grat wi’ spite and teen,

As poet Burns came by.

That, to a bard, I should be seen

Wi’ half my channel dry;

A panegyric rhyme, I ween,

Ev’n as I was, he shor’d me;

But had I in my glory been,

He, kneeling, wad ador’d me.

Here, foaming down the skelvy rocks,

In twisting strength I rin;

There, high my boiling torrent smokes,

Wild-roaring o’er a linn:

Enjoying each large spring and well,

As Nature gave them me,

I am, altho’ I say’t mysel’,

Worth gaun a mile to see.

Would then my noble master please

To grant my highest wishes,

He’ll shade my banks wi’ tow’ring trees,

And bonie spreading bushes.

Delighted doubly then, my lord,

You’ll wander on my banks,

And listen mony a grateful bird

Return you tuneful thanks.

The sober lav’rock, warbling wild,

Shall to the skies aspire;

The gowdspink, Music’s gayest child,

Shall sweetly join the choir;

The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear,

The mavis mild and mellow;

The robin pensive Autumn cheer,

In all her locks of yellow.

This, too, a covert shall ensure,

To shield them from the storm;

And coward maukin sleep secure,

Low in her grassy form:

Here shall the shepherd make his seat,

To weave his crown of flow’rs;

Or find a shelt’ring, safe retreat,

From prone-descending show’rs.

And here, by sweet, endearing stealth,

Shall meet the loving pair,

Despising worlds, with all their wealth,

As empty idle care;

The flow’rs shall vie in all their charms,

The hour of heav’n to grace;

And birks extend their fragrant arms

To screen the dear embrace.

Here haply too, at vernal dawn,

Some musing bard may stray,

And eye the smoking, dewy lawn,

And misty mountain grey;

Or, by the reaper’s nightly beam,

Mild-chequering thro’ the trees,

Rave to my darkly dashing stream,

Hoarse-swelling on the breeze.

Let lofty firs, and ashes cool,

My lowly banks o’erspread,

And view, deep-bending in the pool,

Their shadow’s wat’ry bed:

Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest,

My craggy cliffs adorn;

And, for the little songster’s nest,

The close embow’ring thorn.

So may old Scotia’s darling hope,

Your little angel band

Spring, like their fathers, up to prop

Their honour’d native land!

So may, thro’ Albion’s farthest ken,

To social-flowing glasses,

The grace be—“Athole’s honest men,

And Athole’s bonie lasses!”

5. On Scaring Some Water-Fowl in Lock Turit

       by Robert Burns

Why, ye tenants of the lake,

For me your wat’ry haunt forsake?

Tell me, fellow-creatures, why

At my presence thus you fly?

Why disturb your social joys,

Parent, filial, kindred ties?—

Common friend to you and me,

yature’s gifts to all are free:

Peaceful keep your dimpling wave,

Busy feed, or wanton lave;

Or, beneath the sheltering rock,

Bide the surging billow’s shock.

Conscious, blushing for our race,

Soon, too soon, your fears I trace,

Man, your proud, usurping foe,

Would be lord of all below:

Plumes himself in freedom’s pride,

Tyrant stern to all beside.

The eagle, from the cliffy brow,

Marking you his prey below,

In his breast no pity dwells,

Strong necessity compels:

But Man, to whom alone is giv’n

A ray direct from pitying Heav’n,

Glories in his heart humane—

And creatures for his pleasure slain!

In these savage, liquid plains,

Only known to wand’ring swains,

Where the mossy riv’let strays,

Far from human haunts and ways;

All on Nature you depend,

And life’s poor season peaceful spend.

Or, if man’s superior might

Dare invade your native right,

On the lofty ether borne,

Man with all his pow’rs you scorn;

Swiftly seek, on clanging wings,

Other lakes and other springs;

And the foe you cannot brave,

Scorn at least to be his slave.

6. The Dry Salvages

       by T.S. Eliot

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,

Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;

Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;

Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten

by the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.

Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, propitiated

by worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,

In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,

In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,

And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;

The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

Its hints of earlier and other creation:

The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;

The pools where it offers to our curiosity

The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar

And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,

Many gods and many voices.

The salt is on the briar rose,

The fog is in the fir trees.

The sea howl

And the sea yelp, are different voices

Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,

The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,

The distant rote in the granite teeth,

And the wailing warning from the approaching headland

Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner

Rounded homewards, and the seagull:

And under the oppression of the silent fog

The tolling bell

Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried

Ground swell, a time

Older than the time of chronometers, older

Than time counted by anxious worried women

Lying awake, calculating the future,

Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel

And piece together the past and the future,

Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,

The future futureless, before the morning watch

When time stops and time is never ending;

And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,

Clangs

The bell.

7. Under the Waterfall

       by Thomas Hardy

‘Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,

In a basin of water, I never miss

The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day

Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.

Hence the only prime

And real love-rhyme

That I know by heart,

And that leaves no smart,

Is the purl of a little valley fall

About three spans wide and two spans tall

Over a table of solid rock,

And into a scoop of the self-same block;

The purl of a runlet that never ceases

In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;

With a hollow boiling voice it speaks

And has spoken since hills were turf less peaks.’

‘And why gives this the only prime

Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?

And why does plunging your arm in a bowl

Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?’

‘Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,

Though precisely where none ever has known,

Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,

And by now with its smoothness opalized,

Is a grinking glass:

For, down that pass

My lover and I

Walked under a sky

Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,

In the burn of August, to paint the scene,

And we placed our basket of fruit and wine

By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;

And when we had drunk from the glass together,

Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,

I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,

Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,

Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss

With long bared arms. There the glass still is.

And, as said, if I thrust my arm below

Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe

From the past awakens a sense of that time,

And the glass we used, and the cascade’s rhyme.

The basin seems the pool, and its edge

The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,

And the leafy pattern of china-ware

The hanging plants that were bathing there.

‘By night, by day, when it shines or lours,

There lies intact that chalice of ours,

And its presence adds to the rhyme of love

Persistently sung by the fall above.

No lip has touched it since his and mine

In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.

8. The Shadowy Waters

       by William Butler Yeats

I walked among the seven woods of Coole:

Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond

Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;

Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-no,

Where many hundred squirrels are as happy

As though they had been hidden hy green houghs

Where old age cannot find them; Paire-na-lee,

Where hazel and ash and privet hlind the paths:

Dim Pairc-na-carraig, where the wild bees fling

Their sudden fragrances on the green air;

Dim Pairc-na-tarav, where enchanted eyes

Have seen immortal, mild, proud shadows walk;

Dim Inchy wood, that hides badger and fox

And marten-cat, and borders that old wood

Wise Buddy Early called the wicked wood:

Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods.

I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes,

Yet dreamed that beings happier than men

Moved round me in the shadows, and at night

My dreams were clown hy voices and by fires;

And the images I have woven in this story

Of Forgael and Dectora and the empty waters

Moved round me in the voices and the fires,

And more I may not write of, for they that cleave

The waters of sleep can make a chattering tongue

Heavy like stone, their wisdom being half silence.

How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?

I only know that all we know comes from you,

And that you come from Eden on flying feet.

Is Eden far away, or do you hide

from human thought, as hares and mice and coneys

that run before the reaping-hook and lie

In the last ridge of the barley? Do our woods

And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,

More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?

Is Eden out of time and out of space?

And do you gather about us when pale light

Shining on water and fallen among leaves,

And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers

And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?

I have made this poem for you, that men may read it

Before they read of Forgael and Dectora,

As men in the old times, before the harps began,

Poured out wine for the high invisible ones.

9. Song of the Artesian Water

       by Andrew Barton Paterson

Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought;

But we’re sick of prayers and Providence — we’re going to do without;

With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below,

We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go.

Sinking down, deeper down,

Oh, we’ll sink it deeper down:

As the drill is plugging downward at a thousand feet of level,

If the Lord won’t send us water, oh, we’ll get it from the devil;

Yes, we’ll get it from the devil deeper down.

Now, our engine’s built in Glasgow by a very canny Scot,

And he marked it twenty horse-power, but he don’t know what is what:

When Canadian Bill is firing with the sun-dried gidgee logs,

She can equal thirty horses and a score or so of dogs.

Sinking down, deeper down,

Oh, we’re going deeper down:

If we fail to get the water, then it’s ruin to the squatter,

For the drought is on the station and the weather’s growing hotter,

But we’re bound to get the water deeper down.

But the shaft has started caving and the sinking’s very slow,

And the yellow rods are bending in the water down below,

And the tubes are always jamming, and they can’t be made to shift

Till we nearly burst the engine with a forty horse-power lift.

Sinking down, deeper down,

Oh, we’re going deeper down:

Though the shaft is always caving, and the tubes are always jamming,

Yet we’ll fight our way to water while the stubborn drill is ramming —

While the stubborn drill is ramming deeper down.

But there’s no artesian water, though we’ve passed three thousand feet,

And the contract price is growing, and the boss is nearly beat.

But it must be down beneath us, and it’s down we’ve got to go,

Though she’s bumping on the solid rock four thousand feet below.

Sinking down, deeper down,

Oh, we’re going deeper down:

And it’s time they heard us knocking on the roof of Satan’s dwellin’;

But we’ll get artesian water if we cave the roof of hell in —

Oh! we’ll get artesian water deeper down.

But it’s hark! the whistle’s blowing with a wild, exultant blast,

And the boys are madly cheering, for they’ve struck the flow at last;

And it’s rushing up the tubing from four thousand feet below,

Till it spouts above the casing in a million-gallon flow.

And it’s down, deeper down —

Oh, it comes from deeper down;

It is flowing, ever flowing, in a free, unstinted measure

From the silent hidden places where the old earth hides her treasure —

Where the old earth hides her treasures deeper down.

And it’s clear away the timber, and it’s let the water run:

How it glimmers in the shadow, how it flashes in the sun!

By the silent bells of timber, by the miles of blazing plain

It is bringing hope and comfort to the thirsty land again.

Flowing down, further down;

It is flowing deeper down

To the tortured thirsty cattle, bringing gladness in its going;

Through the droughty days of summer it is flowing, ever flowing —

It is flowing, ever flowing, further down.

Poems about Water That Rhyme

Let the playful rhythms of rhyme carry you away with poems about water with rhymes that celebrate the musicality and beauty of water.

1. All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters

       by James Joyce

All day I hear the noise of waters making moan,

Sad as the sea-bird is when, going Forth alone,

He hears the winds cry to the water’s Monotone.

The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing where I go.

I hear the noise of many waters far below.

All day, all night, I hear them flowing to and fro.

2. On the Break Water

       by Carl Sandburg

On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a

girl are sitting,

She across his knee and they are looking face into face

Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in

silence to each other.

A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-

going boat,

Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of

green,

And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his

knee.

3. As A Beam O’er the Face of the Waters May Glow

       by Thomas Moore

As a beam o’er the face of the waters may glow

While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below,

So the cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile,

Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while.

One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws

Its bleak shade alike o’er our joys and our woes,

To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring,

For which joy has no balm and affliction no sting —

Oh! this thought in the midst of enjoyment will stay,

Like a dead, leafless branch in the summer’s bright ray;

The beams of the warm sun play round it in vain;

It may smile in his light, but it blooms not again.

4. To A Waterfowl

       by William Cullen Bryant

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek’st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sing

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast–

The desert and illimitable air–

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,

Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart

Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

5. Wine and Water

      by G. K. Chesterton

Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,

He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,

And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and fish he took was Whale,

But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,

“I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink

As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,

The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,

And Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think,

The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,

But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,

Till a great big black teetotaler was sent to us for a rod,

And you can’t get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,

For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,

And water is on the Bishop’s board and the Higher Thinker’s shrine,

But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.

6. Though the Great Waters Sleep

       by Emily Dickinson

Though the great Waters sleep,

That they are still the Deep,

We cannot doubt —

No vacillating God

Ignited this Abode

To put it out

7. Divine Epigrams: to Our Lord, Upon the Water Made Wine

       by Richard Crashaw

Thou water turn’st to wine, fair friend of life,

Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of thy reign,

Distills from thence the tears of wrath and strife,

And so turns wine to water back again.

8. How the Waters Closed Above Him

      by Emily Dickinson

How the Waters closed above Him

We shall never know —

How He stretched His Anguish to us

That — is covered too —

Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies

Bold above the Boy

Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket

Sum the History

9. I Think That the Root of the Wind is Water

       by Emily Dickinson

I think that the Root of the Wind is Water —

It would not sound so deep

Were it a Firmamental Product —

Airs no Oceans keep —

Mediterranean intonations —

To a Current’s Ear —

There is a maritime conviction

In the Atmosphere –

10. The Waters Chased Him as He Fled,

       by Emily Dickinson

The waters chased him as he fled,

Not daring look behind —

A billow whispered in his Ear,

“Come home with me, my friend —

My parlor is of shriven glass,

My pantry has a fish

For every palate in the Year” —

To this revolting bliss

The object floating at his side

Made no distinct reply.

11. Once by the Pacific

       by Robert Frost

The shattered water made a misty din.

Great waves looked over others coming in,

and thought of doing something to the shore

that water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,

like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if

The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,

The cliff in being backed by continent;

It looked as if a night of dark intent

Was coming, and not only a night, an age.

Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more than ocean-water broken

Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.

Poems about Water for Primary School

Introduce young learners to the wonders of water with engaging and educational verses that teach them about its many forms and functions.

1. Passage

       by Octavio Paz

More than air

More than water

More than lips

Light Light

Your body is the trace of your body

2. All Water, Take Care

       by Gajanan Mishra

Water, water.

Is not everything water?

Water is air, water is also fire.

Here it is water, water is also there.

All water, take care.

All for you

all truth.

Water, air, fire,

and all earth

and the sky itself.

3. Water Water and Water Everywhere

       by Gajanan Mishra

No water no water no water

you said though, water water

And everywhere water, see dear.

Think like water

live like water

Feel like water

and leave like water.

Water water water,

what color is water?

Water colour

Water action

Have patience in water.

No existence without water

nothing beyond water.

4. Like the Water

       by Wendell Berry

Like the water

of a deep stream,

love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,

we cannot have it all,

or want it all.

In its abundance

it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore

to drink our fill,

and sleep,

while it flows

through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,

except we keep returning to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,

willing to die,

into the commonwealth of its joy.

5. Evening Waterfall

       by Carl Sandburg

What was the name you called me?—

And why did you go so soon?

The crows lift their caw on the wind,

And the wind changed and was lonely.

The warblers cry their sleepy-songs

Across the valley gloaming,

Across the cattle-horns of early stars.

Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop

throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.

What was the name you called me?—

and why did you go so soon?

6. Prairie Waters by Night

       by Carl Sandburg

chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water—sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains.

And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music; joined songs of day-end, feathery throats and stony waters, in a choir chanting new psalms.

It is too much for the long willows when low laughter of a red moon comes down; and the willows drowse and sleep on the shoulders of the running water.

7. The Water Nymphs

       by Ellis Parker Butler

They hide in the brook when I seek to draw nearer,

Laughing amain when I feign to depart;

Often I hear them, now faint and now clearer—

Innocent bold or so sweetly discreet.

Are they Nymphs of the Stream at their playing

Or but the brook I mistook for a voice?

Little care I; for, despite harsh Time’s flaying,

Brook voice or Nymph voice still makes me rejoice.

8. Here’s His Health in Water

       by Robert Burns

ALTHO’ my back be at the wa’,

And tho’ he be the fautor;

Altho’ my back be at the wa’,

Yet, here’s his health in water.

O wae gae by his wanton sides,

Sae brawlie’s he could flatter;

Till for his sake I’m slighted sair,

And dree the kintra clatter:

But tho’ my back be at the wa’,

And tho’ he be the fautor;

But tho’ my back be at the wa’,

Yet here’s his health in water!

9. Song—Braw Lads o’ Gala Water

       by Robert Burns

BRAW, braw lads on Yarrow-braes,

They rove amang the blooming heather;

But Yarrow braes, nor Ettrick shaws

Can match the lads o’ Galla Water.

But there is ane, a secret ane,

Aboon them a’ I loe him better;

And I’ll be his, and he’ll be mine,

The bonie lad o’ Galla Water.

Altho’ his daddie was nae laird,

And tho’ I hae nae meikle tocher,

Yet rich in kindest, truest love,

We’ll tent our flocks by Galla Water.

It ne’er was wealth, it ne’er was wealth,

That coft contentment, peace, or pleasure;

The bands and bliss o’ mutual love,

O that’s the chiefest warld’s treasure.

10. Declaiming Waters None May Dread

       by Emily Dickinson

Declaiming Waters none may dread —

But Waters that are still

Are so for that most fatal cause

In Nature — they are full –

11. Water Music

       by Robert Creeley

The words are a beautiful music.

The words bounce like in water.

Water music,

loud in the clearing

off the boats,

birds, leaves.

They look for a place

to sit and eat–

no meaning,

no point.

Poems about Water and Nature

Discover the interplay between water and the natural world through poetry that reflects on its role in shaping the landscapes and ecosystems around us.

1. Water and Water With Nature

       by Gajanan Mishra

Water and water with nature,

Dear, for life for livelihood

Let us tame the rivers.

Water and water and water,

But we must not disrespect nature.

Everywhere water and water

Fresher smaller bigger and

with so many structures.

Water is life,

we all belong to water

we all water.

With water

we are changing

our very nature

from life partners

to agriculture.

Water water water,

Let us capture

Let us prosper

with water.

Water for food

Water for thought

Water for life.

Value water,

Water valued.

Water protector

Water life-giver

Water destroyer.

On the head water

on the feet water

in entire body

Find water water

and water.

2. Nature Needs Us Too

       by Anonymous

Water flows scarce now,

Let’s conserve for our future,

Nature needs us too

3. A Shallow Lake

       by John Berryman

A shallow lake, with many water birds,

especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,

An extraordinary vivid dream

of Betty & Douglass, and Dona his mother’s estate

was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.

He showed me around.

A policeman trundled a siren up the walk.

It was 6:05 p.m., Don was late home.

I ask if he ever saw

the inmatesa No, they never leave their cells.’

Betty was downstairs, Don called down ‘A drink’

while showering.

I can’t go into the meaning of the dream

except to say a sense of total Loss

afflicted me therof:

an absolute disappearance of continuity & love

and children away at school, the weight of the cross,

and everything is what it seems

4. Bards Freezing

       by John Berryman

Bards freezing, naked, up to the neck in water,

wholly in dark, time limited, different from

initiations now:

the class in writing, clothed & dry & light,

unlimited time, till Poetry takes some,

nobody reads them though,

no trumpets, no solemn instauration, no change;

no commissions, ladies high in soulful praise

(pal) none,

costumes as usual, turtleneck sweaters, loafers,

in & among the busy Many who brays

art is if anything fun.

I say the subject was given as of old,

prescribed the technical treatment, tests really tests

were set by the masters & graded.

I say the paralyzed fear lest one’s not one

is back with us forever, worsts & bests

spring for the public, faded.

5. To the Water Nymphs Drinking at the Fountain

       by Robert Herrick

Reach with your whiter hands to me

Some crystal of the spring;

And I about the cup shall see

Fresh lilies flourishing.

Or else, sweet nymphs, do you but this–

To th’ glass your lips incline;

And I shall see by that one kiss

The water turn’d to wine.

6. At Black Water Pond

       by Mary Oliver

At Black water Pond the tossed waters have settled

after a night of rain.

I dip my cupped hands. I drink

a long time. It tastes

like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold

into my body, waking the bones. I hear them

deep inside me, whispering

oh what is that beautiful thing

that just happened?

7. Water Lily

       by Rainer Maria Rilke

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so

will deprive me, for it is infinite.

The ripple of water, the shade of the sky

are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,

I never close myself with refusal-

in the rythm of my daily soul

I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,

making the dreams of night real:

into my body at the bottom of the water

I attract the beyonds of mirrors…

8. The Voice of the Waters

       by George William Russell

Where the Greyhound River windeth through a loneliness so deep,

Scarce a wild fowl shakes the quiet that the purple boglands keep,

Only God exults in silence over fields no man may reap.

Where the silver wave with sweetness fed the tiny lives of grass

I was bent above, my image mirrored in the fleeting glass,

And a voice from out the water through my being seemed to pass.

“Still above the waters brooding, spirit, in thy timeless quest;

Was the glory of thine image trembling over east and west

Not divine enough when mirrored in the morning water’s breast?”

With the sighing voice that murmured I was borne to ages dim

Ere the void was lit with beauty breathed upon by seraphim,

We were cradled there together folded in the peace in Him.

One to be the master spirit, one to be the slave awoke,

One to shape itself obedient to the fiery words we spoke,

Flame and flood and stars and mountains from the primal waters broke.

I was huddled in the heather when the vision failed its light,

Still and blue and vast above me towered aloft the solemn height,

Where the stars like dewdrops glistened on the mountain slope of night.

9. Underwater Autumn

       by Richard Hugo

Now the summer perch flips twice and glides

a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,

the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.

Along the weed and grain of log he slides his tail.

Nervously the trout (his stream-toned heart

locked in the lake, his poise and nerve disgraced)

above the stirring catfish, curves in bluegill dreams

and curves beyond the sudden thrust of bass.

Surface calm and calm act mask the detonating fear,

the moving crayfish claw, the stare

of sunfish hovering above the cloud-stained sand,

a sucker nudging cans, the grinning mask in on gee.

How do carp resolve the eel and terror here?

They face so many times this brown-ribbed fall of leaves

predicting weather foreign as a shark or prawn

and floating still above them in the paling sun

10. Falling Water

       by Joseph Mayo Wristen

The nights are lonely here without her,

I will be with her soon;

Our happiness.

She is, in my life, the shining light,

in the days of my struggles,

a loving child, for me to admire.

I met this young woman, and

fell in love.

Time lost all significance.

My life found a new meaning.

The knowing of her love,

is like the sound

of falling water.

Poems about Water and Love

Explore the deep connections between water and human emotion through poetry that celebrates the role of water in our relationships and experiences of love.

1. Water in Love

       by Ed Bok Lee

How to love like water loves

when it’s impossible to even taste

all the ghostly sediments

each time you take a sip

Impossible to savor

the salt in your blood

the light and island shorelines

in each living cell

When even the plainest mouthful

tastes more of you than you of it

Sweetest of absences

that frees in wave after wave

debris of thought like the dead,

the drowned, the vanished, and yet

sails your lips

on a voyage toward another’s, plying

all luck and regret

Worship, splash, guzzle, or forget

It clears any difference

Stone washer and mountain dissolver

that will

outlive us, even the memory of

all any eyes touched

Wasp and cactus in a desert

Comet through outer space

Sleep among all the cloud-shepherds’ children

A love so perpetually current

it doesn’t care that you love

without even knowing you love

what you couldn’t survive

three days without

How to love like that: wild

dream-sparkler and meticulous architect

of every snowflake

Wise, ebullient, and generous

as the rain

Deepest of miracles

for a time

borrowing and replenishing

a self

over flowing with fate

2. When We Were Young

       by Daniel Turner

When we were young we loved our fairy tales

A frog could be a prince with just one kiss

Each cloud, a boat where dreamers could set sail

Imagination was the great abyss

Too soon we grew and lost our innocence

Found out that swords are never pulled from stones

That dreams come true but only with expense

And happy ever after’s come and gone

Yet some of us still wish upon a star

Believe that rainbows come with pots of gold

Reality is life for most comes hard

And love like water runs both hot and cold

Like you I wish that fairy tales came true

But grownups know they very seldom do

3. This Night

       by Andrea Dietrich

I’m driftwood, and I’m floating out to sea

As sun descends upon my home – the grove

Of trees whose fragrance still remains with me.

And likewise, heaven’s work of art, a mauve

Surrounding me, now permeates my soul.

Warm water, in the twilight growing cold,

Is rocking me. Beneath dark blue, a shoal

Moves swiftly; overhead there will unfold

The myriad of stars in semblance of

A giant carousel in dimming sky.

Those stars that glitter for the grove I love

Will glitter too for me, where here I lie

Alone, enraptured . . . and I think I might

Drift evermore, enveloped by this night.

4. Forgive And Forget

       by Jan Allison

I asked you what I have done wrong

But there is no response – just a stony silence

No words can convey my guilt, my inner sadness

This will be my last goodbye

My final letter to you my love

Tears flow down my ashen face

Tears of sadness, tears of regret

Drip

Drip

Drip

Drip

Tears fall on the paper as I write

They mingle with the damp blue ink

The inky water leaches into the paper

Its colour starts to bleed and spread

Until it fades into nothingness

I am empty, devoid of emotion

I can say no more

Forgive me for being me

Forgive me for caring

Forgive me for loving you

Goodbye forever

5. Waterfall

       by Andrea Dietrich

Cascading

Sheets of silver water

Spill incessantly into the lake

Thundering

Beauty before our eyes

Beckons us to bathe in radiance

Lost in froth

We find ourselves engulfed

By nature’s pulse, shimmering delight

Lost in love

My heart is pounding too

Falling with the water – into you

6. Flowers of the Heart

       by Mike Gentile

The garden of love bids tending

So often it pains us to render its due

When drought offers threat

And water is scarce

And lovers forget what it means to be true

Yet love, like a garden, rewards us

The flowers of the heart are worth all the pain

How else can we reap?

That beautiful yield

With little to lose and with so much to gain

When I think of where we first started

With just the horizon to capture our view

My eyes now behold

What a garden can be

With effort and love to carry it through

7. Signature of Life

       by Kash Poet

Over the still pond

A leaning branch of Iris

Messenger of Love

Sudden gentle breeze

Flower kisses the water

Whispering love talk

Ripples in water

Sending another message

Signature of life

8. The Lovers

       by Francis J Grasso

How gently darkness lays itself upon the restless sea

While breezes scented cool and clean, are blowing wild and free

When moonlight’s blush fades gradually and hides its ash white face

A thousand candles dimly lit, now frame the soft embrace

All through the night, with spirits bright as shameless dreams unfold

’till sunlight makes the darkness break to show the story told

Tempest waters calm and smooth, stillness now the sea

Sky and water, bound in love… as lovers, you and me

9. If I Could Write Words

       by Spike Milligan

If I could write words

like leaves on an autumn forest floor,

what a bonfire my letters would make.

If I could speak words of water,

you would drown when I said

‘I love you.’

10. Monet’s Water Lilies

       by Robert Hayden

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy

11. The Meeting of the Waters

       by Thomas Moore

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet

As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;

Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart,

Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

Yet it was not that nature had shed o’er the scene

Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;

‘Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill,

Oh! No, — it was something more exquisite still.

‘Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near,

who made every dear scene of enchantment dearer,

and who felt how the best charms of nature improve,

When we see them reflected from looks that we love.

Sweet vale of Avoca! How calm could I rest

in thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best,

Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,

And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.

Contemporary Poems about Water

Discover the cutting-edge voices of contemporary poets who explore water through fresh and innovative perspectives in these modern poems about water.

1. The Waterfall

       by Henry Vaughan

With what deep murmurs through time’s silent stealth

Doth thy transparent, cool, and watery wealth

Here flowing fall,

And chide, and call,

As if his liquid, loose retinue stayed

Ling’ring, and were of this steep place afraid;

The common pass

Where, clear as glass,

All must descend

Not to an end,

But quickened by this deep and rocky grave,

Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.

Dear stream! dear bank, where often I

Have sate and pleased my pensive eye,

Why, since each drop of thy quick store

Runs thither whence it flow’d before,

Should poor souls fear a shade or night,

Who came, sure, from a sea of light?

Or since those drops are all sent back

So sure to thee, that none doth lack,

Why should frail flesh doubt any more

That what God takes, he’ll not restore?

O useful element and clear!

My sacred wash and cleanser here,

My first consigner unto those

Fountains of life where the Lamb goes!

What sublime truths and wholesome themes

Lodge in thy mystical deep streams!

Such as dull man can never find

Unless that Spirit lead his mind

Which first upon thy face did move,

And hatch’d all with his quickening love.

As this loud brook’s incessant fall

In streaming rings restagnates all,

Which reach by course the bank, and then

Are no more seen, just so pass men.

O my invisible estate,

My glorious liberty, still late!

Thou art the channel my soul seeks,

Not this with cataracts and creeks.

2. Sea-Fever

       by 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 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 must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied?

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

3. Autumn Rain

       by D. H. Lawrence’s

The plane leaves

fall black and wet

on the lawn;

The cloud sheaves

in heaven’s fields set

droop and are drawn

In falling seeds of rain;

the seed of heaven

on my face

Falling — I hear again

like echoes even

that softly pace

Heaven’s muffled floor,

the winds that tread

out all the grain

Of tears, the store

harvested

in the sheaves of pain

Caught up aloft:

the sheaves of dead

men that are slain

Now winnowed soft

on the floor of heaven;

manna invisible

Of all the pain

here to us given;

finely divisible

falling as rain.

4. The Pool

       by H.D. 

Are you alive?

I touch you.

You quiver like a sea-fish.

I cover you with my net.

What are you—banded one?

5. Water

       by Philip Larkin

If I were called in

to construct a religion

I should make use of water.

Going to church

Would entail a fording

To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ

Images of sousing,

A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east

A glass of water

Where any-angled light

Would congregate endlessly

6. Breaking the Ice

       by Oliver Tearle

To break through nature’s glass door was the one.

That first hit, as the cold embraced your skin

and made a warm cocoon, was like a sun

Forged from the iciest glaciers. The river ran in

to drench your every inch, a cold caress

that flooded you with heat. As midnight tolls

Deep in some distant city, every stress

within your body ebbs away as shoals

of bioluminescence flood the waters.

This is how you will be reborn. The rush

of those million tiny fireflies, baby swimmers,

is a return to one’s own origins. The fish

Fill the dark with their glow. Life quickens. Night

bursts into new possibilities of light.

7. By the Grey Gulf-Water

       by Andrew Barton Paterson

Far to the Northward there lies a land,

A wonderful land that the winds blow over,

And none may fathom or understand

The charm it holds for the restless rover;

A great grey chaos — a land half made,

Where endless space is and no life stirreth;

There the soul of a man will recoil afraid

From the sphinxlike visage that Nature Weareth.

But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves

her dole of death and her share of slaughter;

many indeed are the nameless graves

where her victims sleep by the Grey Gulf-water.

Slowly and slowly those grey streams glide,

drifting along with a languid motion,

lapping the reed-beds on either side,

Wending their way to the North Ocean.

Grey are the plains where the emus pass

Silent and slow, with their dead demeanour;

over the dead man’s graves the grass

maybe is waving a trifle greener.

Down in the world where men toil and spin

Dame Nature smiles as man’s hand has taught her;

only the dead men her smiles can win

in the great lone land by the Grey Gulf-water.

For the strength of man is an insect’s strength

In the face of that mighty plain and river,

And the life of a man is a moment’s length

To the life of the stream that will run for ever.

And so it comes that they take no part

in small world worries; each hardy rover

rides like a paladin, light of heart,

with the plains around and the blue sky over.

And up in the heavens the brown lark sings

The songs the strange wild land has taught her;

Full of thanksgiving her sweet song rings —

And I wish I were back by the Grey Gulf-water.

8. Waterfall at Lu-han

       by Li Po

Sunlight streams on the river stones.

From high above, the river steadily plunges–

three thousand feet of sparkling water–

the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.

9. Well Water

       by Randall Jarrell

What a girl called “the dailiness of life”

(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,

“Since you’re up . . .” Making you a means to

A means to a means to) is well water

Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.

The pump you pump the water from is rusty

and hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel

a sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny

inexorable hours. And yet sometimes

the wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty

Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear

Water, cold, so cold! You cup your hands

and gulp from them the dailiness of life.

Poems about Water Saving

Reflect on the importance of water conservation through poetry that inspires us to protect this precious resource for future generations in these poems on saving water.

1. Water is A Precious Resource

       by Anonymous 

Water is a precious resource,

It’s time to conserve, it’s time to enforce.

From the mountains to the sea,

Water is vital for you and me.

Don’t waste it, don’t let it run,

Save every drop, one by one.

Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth,

It’s a small step, but it’s a big relief.

Fix the leaks, mend the pipes,

Save water, and save your life.

Plant a tree, it will help,

It’s time to act and not just yelp.

Water is life, and life is water,

Let’s save it for our sons and daughters.

Let’s pledge to conserve, let’s pledge to save,

For a better future, for a better wave.

2. Save Water

       by Sudarsh

The leaky tap drips day and night.

Just fix it right or shut it tight,

It seems the earth with water abounds

But thinks it’s every drop that really counts.

The tap is on, you brush your teeth,

The water flows, you soap your feet

Just think of all the water lost!!!

To close the tap, what does it cost?

The water bottle you take to school,

The water in it is nice and cool,

You drink a bit, the rest you throw,

The water could help a plant grow.

So, save water,

And do your part,

It’s not a game,

Let the water last!!!

3. Water: Tomorrow’s Dream

       by Illustrious Inker

When the water dripped down the tank

Millions of lives together sank

Tip-top, tip-top

Sounds like a melody

Of the deadly graveyard

You can’t see

In Nineteen twenty

We had water in plenty

We washed, bathed & polluted

And the freshness was diluted

In twenty twenty

Water is polluted in plenty

It’s not left for washing, bathing & polluting

Marine life is most affected

In thirty twenty

We will forget our identity

Everyone will haunt for water

And lakes and rivers to slaughter

When the water dripped down the tank

Millions of lives together sank

So I urge you today

To save water in every way

Cause today it’s a need

Tomorrow it might be a dream.

4. Water is Life

       by Anonymous 

Water is life, don’t waste it away

Conservation is key, let’s start today

Fix those leaks, turn off the tap

Small actions can make a big impact

Every drop counts, every action matters

Save for tomorrow, let’s not be scatter

Water conservation, our duty and pride

For a sustainable world, let’s take this stride.

5. Water is Precious

       by Anonymous 

Water is precious, it’s clear to see,

We must conserve it, you and me.

Turn off the tap when we brush our teeth,

And fix those leaks, it’s really not a feat.

Let’s save every drop, every day,

For a better tomorrow, come what may.

6. Without Water

       by Anonymous

Without water, there can be no life

A resource we must conserve to end strife

Taking steps to save, we can make a change

Every action counts, let’s not act strange

Reducing usage, a must-do for all

Conserving water, let’s answer the call

On the path to sustainability, we must strive

Nurturing the planet, where we all thrive

Saving water, a responsibility we share

Ensuring its availability, for future everywhere

Reusing and recycling, let’s adopt

Valuing every drop, a lesson to be taught

At the forefront of this mission, we must stay

Taking action for conservation every day

Inspiring others to join the bandwagon

Onward with our efforts, until our goals are won

Nurturing every drop, for generations to come.

7. Water

       by Clinton Siegle

There is no life without water

honesty on water issues

every drop going to a mining company

reality is water is a resource

everyone should have water

isn’t life made with water

silly question 100 percent of life is water

no life without water

openly we need water

Life without water is not life,

I need water

For everyone should have water

Eternity comprises water

Without water there is no life

In life we need water

Time to get more water

Honesty there is water

Open your doors, Nestles

Unique, you force humanity to purchase water

Time to change who owns the water

Water should be for the people

All humanity should own water

Time for a revolt for water

Even they make an eternity of water

Reality: all life needs water

Is there life without water?

Silly no, there is no life without water

No life without water

Open your doors to water

Life is not life without water

I need water

Fortunately, the world has water

Everyone needs water

8. Water Issue

       by Gajanan Mishra

All about water,

Water and water

everywhere, water.

Yet we are running

Out of water.

Three-fourth water,

our own body is

from water and yet

we are running

Out of water.

Water and water,

Conserve water

or face danger

And disaster.

9. Water Management

       by Asit Kumar Sanyal

Entire India is facing water crisis

ground water going low

ponds, lakes, rivers drying up

rain water flowing to sea

water wastage reaching high

arsenic made our life horrible

work should have begun

two decades ago

we are late

but not too late.

If you want to come out

of this crisis

change your behavior first

stop wasting water

we use 5600 liters water

to produce 1 kg of rice

where China use only 350 liters

see other nations

use modern technology

reduce wastage.

Harvest rain water at home

to recharge ground water

make plenty reservoirs

reserve rain water as much as you can

don’t allow it to go to sea

Maharashtra do this

They supply drinking water

round the year

to whole Mumbai city

from its rain water reservoirs.

Reuse sewage water

water comes out of your homes

is black and grey

black from the toilets

grey from kitchen

gray water treatment involves

only 10 percent cost

compared to black

70 percent of Singapore drinks

treated sewage water.

10. Water Grief Water Joy 2100

       by Kumarmani Mahakul

When there is no water there is danger

When there is excess water there is danger,

Ranger of forest tells that trees die

Due to wild fire that spreads,

It happens when there is no rain

And summer runs for long time and

When monsoon comes very late to rain,

Then excess rain brings flood in river,

Landslide is seen and devastation too,

Trees are uprooted in heavy rain and cyclone,

Climate change is a big threatening,

When there is no water life becomes desert,

When there is clean and pure water we drink,

Polluted and muddy water we cannot drink,

During heavy rain we see water and play

We see flowing water in many streets

But we feel still thirsty expressing grief!

In two thousand and one hundred drops of water

we do our daily rituals and offer prayer to God,

His greatest natural creation is water is nectar,

No other nectar can quench our thirst,

Water only quenches thirst of billions,

Water expels the grief of its scarcity and

we get unlimited happiness getting clean water.

Growing pollution at present in 2019 is in peak

what will happen to the water and air in 2100?

Perhaps we shall see a state of grief and joy,

Water scarcity will burst over its peak point,

If pollution grows at present rate

Then no river or stream water we can drink at all

Due to solar, nuclear, industrial and other radiations,

Although we will see the clean water near us

Still we shall fear to drink due to fear of cancer,

Water carrying radiation can easily cause cancer,

To avoid such danger by 2100 we should be careful,

At right now only we should promise for cleanliness,

Cleanliness with righteousness we need for purity,

In pure mind we should do meditation and link God,

Then we should add our vibrations into water sources,

Water should be charged with positive cosmic energy,

Then only we can get gradually pure water,

God helps us a lot to remove negative energy,

We have to protect greatest resource of nature,

Water is singing and dancing angel in God’s garden,

Are you hearing the pure ripple sound nearer?

You feel, flowing water is singing holy song of God!

Final Thoughts

Water is a vital element that sustains all life on Earth.

From its calm surface to its raging currents, water has the power to evoke a range of emotions in us.

Through the art of poetry, we can explore the beauty, mystery, and power of water in all its forms.

Whether it’s inspiring us to reflect on the spiritual aspects of water, bringing joy and laughter through humor, or calling us to action to protect this precious resource, poems about water remind us of its enduring importance.

So let’s dive in and immerse ourselves in the world of water, one verse at a time in this poetry about water.

Keep on coming back to our poems on water!