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Best Famous Modern World Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Modern World poems. This is a select list of the best famous Modern World poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Modern World poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of modern world poems.

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Written by Mark Doty | Create an image from this poem

The Ancient World

 Today the Masons are auctioning 
their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, 
gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes 
labeled inside the collar "Potentate" 
and "Vizier." Here their chairs, blazoned 
with the Masons' sign, huddled 
like convalescents, lean against one another 

on the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles 
the hierophants carried in parades; 
here's a splendid golden staff some ranking officer waved, 
topped with a golden pyramid and a tiny, 
inquisitive sphinx. No one's worn this stuff 
for years, and it doesn't seem worth buying; 
where would we put it? Still, 

I want that staff. I used to love 
to go to the library -- the smalltown brick refuge 
of those with nothing to do, really, 
'Carnegie' chiseled on the pediment 
above columns that dwarfed an inconsequential street. 
Embarrassed to carry the same book past 
the water fountain's plaster centaurs 

up to the desk again, I'd take 
The Wonders of the World to the Reading Room 
where Art and Industry met in the mural 
on the dome. The room smelled like two decades 
before I was born, when the name 
carved over the door meant something. 
I never read the second section, 

"Wonders of the Modern World"; 
I loved the promise of my father's blueprints, 
the unfulfilled turquoise schemes, 
but in the real structures 
you could hardly imagine a future. 
I wanted the density of history, 
which I confused with the smell of the book: 

Babylon's ziggurat tropical with ferns, 
engraved watercourses rippling; 
the Colossus of Rhodes balanced 
over the harbormouth on his immense ankles. 
Athena filled one end of the Parthenon, 
in an "artist's reconstruction", 
like an adult in a dollhouse. 

At Halicarnassus, Mausolus remembered himself 
immensely, though in the book 
there wasn't even a sketch, 
only a picture of huge fragments. 
In the pyramid's deep clockworks, 
did the narrow tunnels mount toward 
the eye of God? That was the year 

photos were beamed back from space; 
falling asleep I used to repeat a new word 
to myself, telemetry, liking the way 
it seemed to allude to something storied. 
The earth was whorled marble, 
at that distance. Even the stuck-on porticoes 
and collonades downtown were narrative, 

somehow, but the buildings my father engineered 
were without stories. All I wanted 
was something larger than our ordinary sadness -- 
greater not in scale but in context, 
memorable, true to a proportioned, 
subtle form. Last year I knew a student, 
a half mad boy who finally opened his arms 

with a razor, not because he wanted to die 
but because he wanted to design something grand 
on his own body. Once he said, When a child 
realizes his parents aren't enough,
he turns to architecture. 
I think I know what he meant. 
Imagine the Masons parading, 

one of them, in his splendid get-up, 
striding forward with the golden staff, 
above his head Cheops' beautiful shape -- 
a form we cannot separate 
from the stories about the form, 
even if we hardly know them, 
even if it no longer signifies, if it only shines.


Written by Oscar Wilde | Create an image from this poem

My Voice

 Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.
Written by Oscar Wilde | Create an image from this poem

Double Villanelle

 I.


O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And what remains to us of thee?

No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!

Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold
And what remains to us of thee?

And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are chill and cold,
O goat-loot God of Arcady!

Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?

Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?


II.


Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This modern world hath need of thee.

No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
For Faun and nymph are old and grey,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

This is the land where liberty
Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,
This modern world hath need of thee!

A land of ancient chivalry
Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
This England lacks some stronger lay,
This modern world hath need of thee!

Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!
Written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox | Create an image from this poem

All Roads That Lead To God Are Good

 All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street –
The life of prayer and mystic rite –
The student’s search for truth and light –
These paths at one great Junction meet.

Before the oldest book was writ,
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at this unchanging goal,
Through changeless Love, that leads to it.

What matters that one found his Christ
In rising sun, or burning fire?
In faith within him did not tire,
His longing for the Truth sufficed.

Before our modern hell was brought
To edify the modern world,
Full many a hate-filled soul was hurled
In lakes of fire by its own thought.

A thousand creeds have come and gone,
But what is that to you or me?
Creeds are but branches of a tree –
The root of love lives on and on.

Though branch by branch proved withered wood,
The root is warm with precious wine.
Then keep your faith, and leave me mine –
All roads that lead to God are good.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry