10 Best Famous Universes Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Universes poems. This is a select list of the best famous Universes poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Universes poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of universes poems.

• All Famous Universes Poems

 The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.
It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
Rush with the speed of light into empty space.
It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
 dust clouds and nebulae
Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one
 harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no
 way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each 
 other into all the sky, new universes
Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae 
 like charging spearmen again
Invade emptiness.
 No wonder we are so fascinated with 
 fireworks
And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for
 the howling fireblast that we were born from.

But the whole sum of the energies
That made and contain the giant atom survives. It will 
 gather again and pile up, the power and the glory--
And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the 
 whole universe beats like a heart.
Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back 
 and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,
The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His 
 terrible life.
 He is beautiful beyond belief.
And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty.
 We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.
He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's
 Florence, no anthropoid God
Making commandments,: this is the God who does not care
 and will never cease. Look at the seas there
Flashing against this rock in the darkness--look at the
 tide-stream stars--and the fall of nations--and dawn
Wandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to
 meet the sea. These are real and we see their beauty.
The great explosion is probably only a metaphor--I know not
 --of faceless violence, the root of all things.

 The Four Archangels, so the legends tell,
Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Azrael,
Being first of those to whom the Power was shown
Stood first of all the Host before The Throne,
And, when the Charges were allotted, burst
Tumultuous-winged from out the assembly first.
Zeal was their spur that bade them strictly heed
Their own high judgment on their lightest deed.
Zeal was their spur that, when relief was given,
Urged them unwearied to new toils in Heaven; 
For Honour's sake perfecting every task
Beyond what e 'en Perfection's self could ask. . .
And Allah, Who created Zeal and Pride,
Knows how the twain are perilous-near allied.


It chanced on one of Heaven's long-lighted days,
The Four and all the Host being gone their ways
Each to his Charge, the shining Courts were void
Save for one Seraph whom no charge employed,
With folden wings and slumber-threatened brow,
To whom The Word: "Beloved, what dost thou?"
"By the Permission," came the answer soft,
Little I do nor do that little oft.
As is The Will in Heaven so on Earth
Where by The Will I strive to make men mirth"
He ceased and sped, hearing The Word once more:
" Beloved, go thy way and greet the Four."

Systems and Universes overpast,
The Seraph came upon the Four, at last,
Guiding and guarding with devoted mind
The tedious generations of mankind
Who lent at most unwilling ear and eye
When they could not escape the ministry. . . .
Yet, patient, faithful, firm, persistent, just
Toward all that gross, indifferent, facile dust,
The Archangels laboured to discharge their trust
By precept and example, prayer and law,
Advice, reproof, and rule, but, labouring, saw
Each in his fellows' countenance confessed,
The Doubt that sickens: "Have I done my best?"

Even as they sighed and turned to toil anew,
The Seraph hailed them with observance due;
And, after some fit talk of higher things,
Touched tentative on mundane happenings.
This they permitting, he, emboldened thus,
Prolused of humankind promiscuous,
And, since the large contention less avails
Than instances observed, he told them tales--
Tales of the shop, the bed, the court, the street,
Intimate, elemental, indiscreet:
Occasions where Confusion smiting swift
Piles jest on jest as snow-slides pile the drift
Whence, one by one, beneath derisive skies,
The victims' bare, bewildered heads arise--
Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced
With humour blinding as the doom it faced--
Stark tales of ribaldy that broke aside
To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried-
Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue,
But Only (Allah be exalted!) true,
And only, as the Seraph showed that night,
Delighting to the limits of delight.


These he rehearsed with artful pause and halt,
And such pretence of memory at fault,
That soon the Four--so well the bait was thrown--
Came to his aid with memories of their own--
Matters dismissed long since as small or vain,
Whereof the high significance had lain
Hid, till the ungirt glosses made it plain.
Then, as enlightenment came broad and fast,
Each marvelled at his own oblivious past
Until--the Gates of Laughter opened wide--
The Four, with that bland Seraph at their side,
While they recalled, compared, and amplified,
In utter mirth forgot both Zeal and Pride!


High over Heaven the lamps of midnight burned
Ere, weak with merriment, the Four returned,
Not in that order they were wont to keep--
Pinion to pinion answering, sweep for sweep,
In awful diapason heard afar--
But shoutingly adrift 'twixt star and star;
Reeling a planet's orbit left or right
As laughter took them in the abysmal Night;
Or, by the point of some remembered jest,
Winged and brought helpless down through gulfs unguessed,
Where the blank worlds that gather to the birth
Leaped in the Womb of Darkness at their mirth,
And e'en Gehenna's bondsmen understood.
They were not damned from human brotherhood . . .

Not first nor last of Heaven's high Host, the Four
That night took place beneath The Throne once more.
0 lovelier than their morning majesty,
The understanding light behind the eye!
0 more compelling than their old command,
The new-learned friendly gesture of the hand!
0 sweeter than their zealous fellowship,
The wise half-smile that passed from lip to lip!
0 well and roundly, when Command was given,
They told their tale against themselves to Heaven,
And in the silence, waiting on The Word,
Received the Peace and Pardon of The Lord!

 I MET a Seer, 
Passing the hues and objects of the world, 
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons. 
 Put in thy chants, said he, 
No more the puzzling hour, nor day—nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all, That of
 Eidólons. 
 Ever the dim beginning; 
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle; 
Ever the summit, and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) Eidólons!
 Eidólons! 
 Ever the mutable!
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering; 
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine, Issuing Eidólons! 
 Lo! I or you! 
Or woman, man, or State, known or unknown, 
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build Eidólons.
 The ostent evanescent; 
The substance of an artist’s mood, or savan’s studies long, 
Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils, To fashion his Eidólon. 
 Of every human life, 
(The units gather’d, posted—not a thought, emotion, deed, left out;)
The whole, or large or small, summ’d, added up, In its Eidólon. 
 The old, old urge; 
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo! newer, higher pinnacles; 
From Science and the Modern still impell’d, The old, old urge, Eidólons. 
 The present, now and here,
America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl, 
Of aggregate and segregate, for only thence releasing, To-day’s Eidólons. 
 These, with the past, 
Of vanish’d lands—of all the reigns of kings across the sea, 
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages, Joining Eidólons.
 Densities, growth, façades, 
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees, 
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, Eidólons everlasting. 
 Exaltè, rapt, extatic, 
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape, and shape, and shape, The mighty Earth-Eidólon. 
 All space, all time, 
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, 
Swelling, collapsing, ending—serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill’d with
 Eidólons only. 
 The noiseless myriads!
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty! 
The separate, countless free identities, like eyesight; The true realities,
 Eidólons. 
 Not this the World, 
Nor these the Universes—they the Universes, 
Purport and end—ever the permanent life of life, Eidólons, Eidólons.
 Beyond thy lectures, learn’d professor, 
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope, observer keen—beyond all mathematics, 
Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy—beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The
 entities of entities, Eidólons. 
 Unfix’d, yet fix’d; 
Ever shall be—ever have been, and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidólons, Eidólons,
 Eidólons. 
 The prophet and the bard, 
Shall yet maintain themselves—in higher stages yet, 
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy—interpret yet to them, God, and
 Eidólons. 
 And thee, My Soul!
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations! 
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, Thy mates, Eidólons. 
 Thy Body permanent, 
The Body lurking there within thy Body, 
The only purport of the Form thou art—the real I myself, An image, an
 Eidólon.
 Thy very songs, not in thy songs; 
No special strains to sing—none for itself; 
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, A round, full-orb’d
 Eidólon.

 NO coward soul is mine, 
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: 
I see Heaven's glories shine, 
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 

O God within my breast, 
Almighty, ever-present Deity! 
Life--that in me has rest, 
As I--undying Life--have power in Thee! 

Vain are the thousand creeds 
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; 
Worthless as wither'd weeds, 
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, 

To waken doubt in one 
Holding so fast by Thine infinity; 
So surely anchor'd on 
The steadfast rock of immortality. 

With wide-embracing love 
Thy Spirit animates eternal years, 
Pervades and broods above, 
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. 

Though earth and man were gone, 
And suns and universes cease to be, 
And Thou were left alone, 
Every existence would exist in Thee. 

There is not room for Death, 
Nor atom that his might could render void: 
Thou--Thou art Being and Breath, 
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

 ON the beach at night alone, 
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song, 
As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of
 the future. 

A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, 
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same, 
All distances of place, however wide, 
All distances of time—all inanimate forms, 
All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, 
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes,
All men and women—me also; 
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages; 
All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe; 
All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future; 
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, and shall forever span them, and
 compactly hold them, and enclose them.

 I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul; 
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of,
 are
 now looking faces I am not cognizant of—calm and actual faces; 
I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the
 world; 
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless—in vain I try to
 think
 how limitless; 
I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the
 air
 on purpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than
 they;
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years; 
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors—and
 that
 the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice
 another
 voice; 
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for—and
 that
 the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children, are provided for; 
(Did you think Life was so well provided for—and Death, the purport of all Life, is
 not
 well provided for?) 
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them—no matter whose
 wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest
 points;
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at any time, is provided for,
 in
 the inherences of things; 
I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space—but I believe Heavenly
 Death
 provides for all.

 No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life—that in me has rest,
As I—undying Life—have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

 Two universes mosey down the street
Connected by love and a leash and nothing else.
Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves
While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
Getting a secret knowledge through the nose
Almost entirely hidden from my sight.

We stand while he's enraptured by a bush
Till I can't stand our standing any more
And haul him off; for our relationship
Is patience balancing to this side tug
And that side drag; a pair of symbionts
Contented not to think each other's thoughts.

What else we have in common's what he taught,
Our interest in ****. We know its every state
From steaming fresh through stink to nature's way
Of sluicing it downstreet dissolved in rain
Or drying it to dust that blows away.
We move along the street inspecting ****.

His sense of it is keener far than mine,
And only when he finds the place precise
He signifies by sniffing urgently
And circles thrice about, and squats, and shits,
Whereon we both with dignity walk home
And just to show who's master I write the poem.

 It is a year dear one, since you afar
Went out beyond my yearning mortal sight­
A wondrous year! perchance in many a star
You have sojourned, or basked within the light
Of mightier suns; it may be you have trod
The glittering pathways of the Pleiades,
And through the Milky Way's white mysteries
Have walked at will, fire-shod. 

You may have gazed in the immortal eyes
Of prophets and of martyrs; talked with seers
Learned in all the lore of Paradise,
The infinite wisdom of eternal years;
To you the Sons of Morning may have sung,
The impassioned strophes of their matin hymn,
For you the choirs of the seraphim
Their harpings wild out-flung. 

But still I think at eve you come to me
For old, delightsome speech of eye and lip,
Deeming our mutual converse thus to be
Fairer than archangelic comradeship;
Dearer our close communings fondly given
Than all the rainbow dreams a spirit knows,
Sweeter my gathered violets than the rose
Upon the hills of heaven. 

Can any exquisite, unearthly morn,
Silverly breaking o'er a starry plain,
Give to your soul the poignant pleasure born
Of virgin moon and sunset's lustrous stain
When we together watch them ? Oh, apart
A hundred universes you may roam,
But still I know­I know­your only home
Is here within my heart!

 You see that porcelain ranged there in the window—
Platters and soup-plates done with pale pink rosebuds,
And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy?
See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges!
They're works of art—minutely seen and felt,
Each petal done devoutly. Is it failure
To spend your blood like this?

Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal—
My brain unfolding! There you'll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window,
Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . .

Sometimes my wife comes there to speak to me . . .
Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . .
Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight,
Dilate to a gorgeous size, blow delicate bubbles,
Drowse among dark green weeds. On rainy days,
You'll see a gas-light shedding light behind me—
An eye-shade round my forehead. There I sit,
Twirling the tiny brushes in my paint-cups,
Painting the pale pink rosebuds, minute violets,
Exquisite wreaths of dark green ivy leaves.
On this leaf, goes a dream I dreamed last night
Of two soft-patterned toads—I thought them stones,
Until they hopped! And then a great black spider,—
Tarantula, perhaps, a hideous thing,—
It crossed the room in one tremendous leap.
Here,—as I coil the stems between two leaves,—
It is as if, dwindling to atomy size,
I cried the secret between two universes . . .
A friend of mine took hasheesh once, and said
Just as he fell asleep he had a dream,—
Though with his eyes wide open,—
And felt, or saw, or knew himself a part
Of marvelous slowly-wreathing intricate patterns,
Plane upon plane, depth upon coiling depth,
Amazing leaves, folding one on another,
Voluted grasses, twists and curves and spirals—
All of it darkly moving . . . as for me,
I need no hasheesh for it—it's too easy!
Soon as I shut my eyes I set out walking
In a monstrous jungle of monstrous pale pink roseleaves,
Violets purple as death, dripping with water,
And ivy-leaves as big as clouds above me.

Here, in a simple pattern of separate violets—
With scalloped edges gilded—here you have me
Thinking of something else. My wife, you know,—
There's something lacking—force, or will, or passion,
I don't know what it is—and so, sometimes,
When I am tired, or haven't slept three nights,
Or it is cloudy, with low threat of rain,
I get uneasy—just like poplar trees
Ruffling their leaves—and I begin to think
Of poor Pauline, so many years ago,
And that delicious night. Where is she now?
I meant to write—but she has moved, by this time,
And then, besides, she might find out I'm married.
Well, there is more—I'm getting old and timid—
The years have gnawed my will. I've lost my nerve!
I never strike out boldly as I used to—
But sit here, painting violets, and remember
That thrilling night. Photographers, she said,
Asked her to pose for them; her eyes and forehead,—
Dark brown eyes, and a smooth and pallid forehead,—
Were thought so beautiful.—And so they were.
Pauline . . . These violets are like words remembered . . .
Darling! she whispered . . . Darling! . . . Darling! . . . Darling!
Well, I suppose such days can come but once.
Lord, how happy we were! . . .

Here, if you only knew it, is a story—
Here, in these leaves. I stopped my work to tell it,
And then, when I had finished, went on thinking:
A man I saw on a train . . . I was still a boy . . .
Who killed himself by diving against a wall.
Here is a recollection of my wife,
When she was still my sweetheart, years ago.
It's funny how things change,—just change, by growing,
Without an effort . . . And here are trivial things,—
A chill, an errand forgotten, a cut while shaving;
A friend of mine who tells me he is married . . .
Or is that last so trivial? Well, no matter!

This is the sort of thing you'll see of me,
If you look hard enough. This, in its way,
Is a kind of fame. My life arranged before you
In scrolls of leaves, rosebuds, violets, ivy,
Clustered or wreathed on plate and cup and platter . . .
Sometimes, I say, I'm just like John the Baptist—
You have my head before you . . . on a platter.