Famous Comet Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Comet poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous comet poems. These examples illustrate what a famous comet poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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This Much And More

by Djuna Barnes
If my lover were a comet
Hung in air,
I would braid my leaping body
In his hair.

Yea, if they buried him ten leagues
Beneath the loam,
My fingers they would learn to dig
And I’d plunge home!...Read more of this...

Account Of A Visit From St. Nicholas

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, 
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,

And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my...Read more of this...

Exposure

by Seamus Heaney
 It is December in Wicklow:
Alders dripping, birches
Inheriting the last light,
The ash tree cold to look at.

A comet that was lost
Should be visible at sunset,
Those million tons of light
Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,

And I sometimes see a falling star.
If I could come on meteorite!
Instead I walk through damp leaves,
Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,

Imagining a hero
On some muddy...Read more of this...

Cascade

by Robert Desnos
 What sort of arrow split the sky and this rock?
It's quivering, spreading like a peacock's fan
Like the mist around the shaft and knot less feathers
Of a comet come to nest at midnight.

How blood surges from the gaping wound,
Lips already silencing murmur and cry.
One solemn finger holds back time, confusing
The witness of the eyes where the deed is written.

Silence? We...Read more of this...

The Comet at Valbury or Yellham

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

It bends far over Yell'ham Plain, 
 And we, from Yell'ham Height, 
Stand and regard its fiery train, 
 So soon to swim from sight. 

II 

It will return long years hence, when 
 As now its strange swift shine 
Will fall on Yell'ham; but not then 
 On that sweet form of thine....Read more of this...

Love Is A Parallax

by Sylvia Plath
 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of...Read more of this...

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

by Elizabeth Bishop
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over...Read more of this...

Brass Keys

by Carl Sandburg
 JOY … weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel … painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face … slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room … forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new...Read more of this...

Big Miniature

by Dejan Stojanovic
To transform a grimace into a sound
Sounds impossible, yet it is possible
To transform a vision into music, 
To go outside an enslaved personality, 
To become impersonal by transforming
Into sand, into water, into light, 
To feel the air and breathe the air
By becoming the air, become
A bird, the first cell, the first man, 
Become a wandering comet, 
A dying star, a...Read more of this...

Account of a Visit From ST. Nicholas

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 "Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,
And mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had...Read more of this...

Lines inscribed to P. de Loutherbourg Esq. R. A

by Mary Darby Robinson
 WHERE on the bosom of the foamy RHINE,
In curling waves the rapid waters shine;
Where tow'ring cliffs in awful grandeur rise,
And midst the blue expanse embrace the skies;
The wond'ring eye beholds yon craggy height,
Ting'd with the glow of Evening's fading light:
Where the fierce cataract swelling o'er its bound,
Bursts from its source, and dares the depth profound.
On ev'ry side the headlong...Read more of this...

A Visit From St. Nicholas

by Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled...Read more of this...

Captain Teach alias Black Beard

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Edward Teach was a native of Bristol, and sailed from that port
On board a privateer, in search of sport,
As one of the crew, during the French War in that station,
And for personal courage he soon gained his Captain's approbation. 

'Twas in the spring of 1717, Captajn Harnigold and Teach sailed from Providence
For the continent of America, and no further...Read more of this...

I rode a rainbow unicorn

by Kenn Nesbitt
I rode a rainbow unicorn.
We sailed across the sky.
(I’d fed him lots of Skittles,
since they always make him fly.)
We took off like a comet
on a long and graceful flight.
And everywhere the people stopped
and marveled at the sight.
His path was bright and colorful.
It sparkled, shimmered, shined,
as he arced across the heavens
shooting rainbows from behind.

 --Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2016. All...Read more of this...

The Flaâneur

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I love all sights of earth and skies, 
From flowers that glow to stars that shine; 
The comet and the penny show, 
All curious things, above, below, 
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: 
I claim the Christian Pagan's line, 
Humani nihil, -- even so, -- 
And is not human life divine? 
When soft the western breezes blow, 
And...Read more of this...

Halleys Comet

by Stanley Kunitz
 Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk 
across the board and told us 
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course 
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills 
with a wild look in his eyes 
stood in the public square...Read more of this...

Stings

by Sylvia Plath
 Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I

Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it

Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.'
Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they...Read more of this...

Churchills Grave

by George (Lord) Byron
 I stood beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and asked
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this...Read more of this...

The Bubble: A Song

by Robert Herrick
 To my revenge, and to her desperate fears,
Fly, thou made bubble of my sighs and tears!
In the wild air, when thou hast roll'd about,
And, like a blasting planet, found her out;
Stoop, mount, pass by to take her eye--then glare
Like to a dreadful comet in the air:
Next, when thou dost perceive her fixed sight
For thy revenge to be most opposite,
Then,...Read more of this...

Year of Meteors 1859 '60

by Walt Whitman
 YEAR of meteors! brooding year! 
I would bind in words retrospective, some of your deeds and signs; 
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad; 
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia; 
(I was at hand—silent I stood, with teeth shut close—I watch’d;
I stood very near you, old man,...Read more of this...

A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton

by James Thomson
 Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth, 
To mingle with his stars; and every muse,
Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight
Of honours due to his illustrious name?
But what can man?--Even now the sons of light,
In strains high-warbled to seraphic lyre,
Hail his arrival on the coast of bliss.
Yet am not I deterr'd, though high the theme,
And sung to harps...Read more of this...

The Peace-Pipe

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.
From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O'er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger...Read more of this...

Syringa

by John Ashbery
 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point?...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Childhood

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Downward through the evening twilight, 
In the days that are forgotten, 
In the unremembered ages, 
From the full moon fell Nokomis, 
Fell the beautiful Nokomis, 
She a wife, but not a mother.
She was sporting with her women, 
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, 
When her rival the rejected, 
Full of jealousy and hatred, 
Cut the leafy swing asunder, 
Cut...Read more of this...

One to Four

by Omer Tarin
I

One quarter of a century has elapsed
the diurnal movement of a life-cycle
rotating on its own axis
turned inwards and away from
hung by a nail upon the casement 

II

Two of the nine lives have drifted 
sinking somewhere near the embankment
while out prowling the empty streets at night
digging in this corner and that
poking here and there
in the trashcans lining the alley

III

Three horsemen have...Read more of this...

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