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Harry Kemp

I lived from 1883-1960. I was from the United States, and am in the Americas category.

Harry Kemp was a published author and poet, known as the "Tramp Poet," and "The Poet of the Dunes," among other names. In 1900, when Kemp was seventeen, he ran away to sea, shipping as cabin boy on the German ship, "Pegtolozzi," bound from New York City for Sydney, Australia. It was somewhat later when he settled down ashore and attended Kansas University; during his time there that he became known as "The Kansas Poet" and contributed to a number of books. Kemp is perhaps best known for the nautical poems he composed based on his deep-sea experience. In the years just before World War 1, he established himself in the summer artist colony of Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod where he lived in a driftwood beachhouse. He was a member of the group which included Eugene O'Neil, Jack Reed, and other Provincetown Players. Kemp became a slave to alcohol sometime in the 1930s, and lived on the largesse of those who had admired his work of earlier years. His work deteriorated and little from his last 30-odd years received any attention.

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  • Ship's Glamour
    When there wakes any wind to shake this place,
    This wave-hemmed atom of land on which I dwell,
    27 lines
  • The Remedy
    When you've failed with ordered people, when you've sunk neck-deep again
    In the sluggish wash and jetsam of the slackened tides of me
    24 lines, 1 comment
  • Hesperides
    Beyond the blue rim of the world,
    Washed round with languid-lapsing seas,
    19 lines
  • The Beach Comber
    I'd like to return to the world again,
    To the dutiful, work-a-day world of men, —
    17 lines
  • There's Nothing Like A Ship At Sea
    There's nothing like a ship at sea with all her sails full-spread
    And the ocean thundering backward 'neath her mounting figurehead
    18 lines, 7 comments
  • A Sailor's Life
    Oh, a sailor hasn't much to brag —
    An oilskin suit and a dunnage bag.
    20 lines, 1 comment
  • Kansas
    Let other countries glory in their past,
    But Kansas glories in her days to be,
    7 lines, 2 comments
  • The Endless Lure
    When I was a lad I went to sea
    And they made a cabin boy of me.
    29 lines
  • Fo'c'sle Comradeship
    There's not much in the fo'c'sle of a ship
    But old sea boots and chests that stand in rows
    16 lines, 1 comment
  • Wind-Jammer's Song (1845 Clipper Days)
    All hands on deck, below there!
    The storm is coming soon,
    35 lines, 1 comment
  • Said The Captain To Me
    "Nothing but damn fools sail the sea,"
    Said the Captain to me.
    3 lines, 1 comment
  • A Whaler's Confession
    Three long years a-sailing, three long years a-whaling,
    Kicking through the ice floes, caught in calm or gale,
    28 lines, 1 comment
  • The Doldrums (A Still-Life Picture)
    The sails hang dead, or they lift and flap like a cornfield scarecrow's coat,
    And the seabirds swim abreast of us like ducks that pla
    24 lines, 2 comments
  • Jim
    We couldn't make him out; he seldom spoke;
    We never caught him smiling at a joke —
    23 lines
  • Seaside Talkers (Provincetown Summer of 1917)
    They drank the bitter, salt wine of the sea,
    They breathed up drowning bubbles from below
    16 lines
  • Blind
    The Spring blew trumpets of color;
    Her Green sang in my brain—
    13 lines
  • The Girl That Married Another Man
    Oh, it's easy come and it's easy go
    With most of the little girls I know,—
    26 lines
  • A Poet's Room (Greenwich Village 1912)
    I have a table, cot and chair
    And nothing more. The walls are bare
    32 lines
  • Good-Bye! (a chantey to be sung at the capstan)
    Good-bye to Dirty Kate's saloon —
    Walk 'er round!
    48 lines
  • Chanteys
    These are the songs that we sing with crowding feet,
      Heaving up the anchor chain,
    14 lines, 1 comment
  • Going Down In Ships
    Going down to sea in ships
    Is a glorious thing,
    45 lines
  • Farewell
    Tell them, O Sky-born, when I die
    With high romance to wife,
    10 lines
  • Kansas And London
    Where the vast and cloudless sky was broken by one
          crow
    5 lines, 1 comment
  • Shanghaied
    Shanghaied! . .  . I swore I'd stay ashore
    And sail the wide, wide seas no more! . . .
    20 lines
  • A Shining Ship
    Have you ever seen a shining ship
    Riding the broad-backed wave,
    35 lines
  • A Wheat-Field Fantasy
    As I sat on a Kansas hilltop,
          While, far away from my,
    38 lines
  • The Wreck
    Seared bone-white by the glare of summer weather,
    Cast side-long, on the barren beach she lies,
    19 lines
  • The Chantey Of The Cook (dithyramb of a discontented crew)
    The Devil take the cook, that old grey-bearded fellow,
    Yo ho, haul away!
    56 lines
  • Then
    When all the sea's high ships
    Have dropped beyond my sky
    4 lines
  • Clipper Days (a song from Snug Harbor)
    I am eighty years old and somewhat,
    But I give to God the praise
    48 lines
1 - 30 of 38  Show all by written, popularity, title, first line

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