Famous Cosmos Poems by Famous Poets

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

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from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

temporising with the eternal

by Rg Gregory
 i don’t know what you’re up to
yet but for me
you wouldn’t exist
(not on this page anyway -
not using the word exist)
so – you’re a fake (eternity)
one i wouldn’t raise a cup to
except you’re there
and won’t go away
i can’t win – and it’s not fair

best turn my back on you – get on
with what i meet
smack in the eyes
(that’s experience...Read more of this...

snail and spiral

by Rg Gregory
 i take my property with me says the snail
slow-moving (yes) but packed with sublime thought
the house upon its back some kind of grail
vulnerable to brute boot - and wisdom bought

by barely making it through life’s dull crawl
the pace of it denies technology’s demand
that speed be safety (that getting there is all)
the snail enjoys being aeon’s ampersand

the snail goes round...Read more of this...

The Ape And God

by Robert William Service
 Son put a poser up to me
That made me scratch my head:
"God made the whole wide world," quoth he;
"That's right, my boy," I said.
Said son: "He mad the mountains soar,
And all the plains lie flat;
But Dad, what did he do before
 He did all that?

Said I: "Creation was his biz;
He set the stars to shine;
The sun and moon and...Read more of this...

Worlds

by Richard Wilbur
 For Alexander there was no Far East,
Because he thought the Asian continent
India ended. Free Cathay at least
Did not contribute to his discontent.

But Newton, who had grasped all space, was more
Serene. To him it seemed that he'd but played
With several shells and pebbles on the shore
Of that profundity he had not made.

Swiss Einstein with his relativity -
Most secure of all....Read more of this...

The Simple Line

by Laura Riding Jackson
 The secrets of the mind convene splendidly,
Though the mind is meek.
To be aware inwardly
of brain and beauty
Is dark too recognizable.
Thought looking out on thought
Makes one an eye:
Which it shall be, both decide.
One is with the mind alone,
The other is with other thoughts gone
To be seen from afar and not known.

When openly these inmost sights
Flash and speak fully,
Each head at...Read more of this...

Cosmos

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Love is a cosmos, how deeper you see how deeper you go in,if you don't concentrate to, you lose it, if you do, you have it forever."
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

Dream Song 79: Op. posth. no. 2

by John Berryman
 Whence flew the litter whereon he was laid?
Of what heroic stuff was warlock Henry made?
and questions of that sort
perplexed the bulging cosmos, O in short
was sandalwood in good supply when he
flared out of history

& the obituary in The New York Times
into the world of generosity
creating the air where are
& can be, only, heroes? Statues & rhymes
signal his fiery Passage,...Read more of this...

A Display Of Mackeral

by Mark Doty
 They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail, 
each a foot of luminosity 
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections 

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery 

prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soap-bubble sphere, 

think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor, 
and not a one in any way 

distinguished from the other
--nothing about them
of individuality....Read more of this...

Happy Dust

by Aleister Crowley
 For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter,...Read more of this...

(filtered)

by Rg Gregory
 a nearby field provides the plants
sometimes with a wild profusion
(organisation seems a long way off)

it takes an eye used to ink or paint
to confront such a rich confusion
and draw it inwards to a proof

that pattern too within constraints
has room for a wild fling - passion's
best rendered when the heart's aloof

images creep up through the vents
seeding voids with light explosions
chaos...Read more of this...

The Gift

by David Lehman
 "He gave her class. She gave him sex." 
 -- Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers 

He gave her money. She gave him head. 
He gave her tips on "aggressive growth" mutual funds. She gave him a red rose 
 and a little statue of eros. 
He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis 1...Read more of this...

Nothing Stays Put

by Amy Clampitt
 In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985


The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes—a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom—
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics—
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested,...Read more of this...

eight roundels

by Rg Gregory
 (roundel: variation of the rondeau
consisting of three stanzas of three
lines each, linked together with but
two rhymes and a refrain at the end
of the first and third group)



1.
the blind rose

today's fullness is tomorrow's gone
(the next day after no one knows)
last year's dream now feeds upon
 what blindly grows

imagine if you like a rose
on which no likely sun has shone
a darkness...Read more of this...

Man Listening To Disc

by Billy Collins
 This is not bad --
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music flowing through the soft calipers
of these earphones,

as if he were right beside me
on this clear day in March,
the pavement sparkling with sunlight,
pigeons fluttering off the curb,
nodding over a profusion of bread crumbs.

In fact, I would say
my delight at being suffused
with phrases from his saxophone --
some like...Read more of this...

The Convert

by G K Chesterton
 After one moment when I bowed my head 
And the whole world turned over and came upright, 
And I came out where the old road shone white, 
I walked the ways and heard what all men said, 
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed, 
Being not unlovable but strange and light; 
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite...Read more of this...

Villanelle: The Psychological Hour

by Ezra Pound
 I had over prepared the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had laid out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

So much barren regret,
So many hours wasted!
And now I watch, from the window,
the rain, the wandering busses.

"Their little cosmos is shaken" - 
the air is alive...Read more of this...

My Indian In-laws

by Belinda Subraman
 I remember India:
palm trees, monkey families,
fresh lime juice in the streets,
the sensual inundation
of sights and smells
and excess in everything.
I was exotic and believable there.

I was walking through dirt
in my sari, 
to temples of the deities
following the lead
of my Indian in-laws.
I was scooping up fire with my hands,
glancing at idols that held no meaning for me,
being marked by the ash.

They...Read more of this...

Things I Didnt Know I Loved

by Nazim Hikmet
 it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain 
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it 
I've never worked the earth
it must be my...Read more of this...

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