Famous Creation Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Creation poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous creation poems. These examples illustrate what a famous creation poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Friedrich von Schiller
Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given--
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes--
For him new suns are in the skies!
Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into...Read more of this...
by
Kathleen Raine
O never harm the dreaming world,
the world of green, the world of leaves,
but let its million palms unfold
the adoration of the trees.
It is a love in darkness wrought
obedient to the unseen sun,
longer than memory, a thought
deeper than the graves of time.
The turning spindles of the cells
weave a slow forest over space,
the dance of love, creation,
out of...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O thou who art the summing up of the universal creation,
cease for an instant to occupy thyself with gain or
loss; take a cup of wine from the hand of the etern
cupbearer, and free thyself thus altogether from the cares
of this world and from those of the other!...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
O beautiful woman, too well we know
The terrible weight of thy woman's woe,
So great that the world, in its careless way,
Remembered thy beauty for more than a day.
In the name of the truth from thy brow is torn
The crown of redemption thou long hast worn,
And into the valley of sin thou art hurled
To be trampled anew by the feet of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Departed -- to the Judgment --
A Mighty Afternoon --
Great Clouds -- like Ushers -- learning --
Creation -- looking on --
The Flesh -- Surrendered -- Cancelled --
The Bodiless -- begun --
Two Worlds -- like Audiences -- disperse --
And leave the Soul -- alone --...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
As of angel fallen from grace?"
II
- "Her look is but her...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Chatterton
Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade
The Texture of our Souls were made
Till thy Command gave light.
The Sun of Glory gleam'd the Ray,
Refin'd the Darkness into Day,
And bid the Vapours fly;
Impell'd by his eternal Love
He left his Palaces above...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Earth and water without form,
change, or pause: as if the third
day had not come, this calm norm
of chaos denies the Word.
One sees only a surface
pocked with rushes, the starved clumps
pressed between water and space --
rootless, perennial stumps
fixed in position, entombed
in nothing; it is too late
to bring forth branches, to...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Patchen
Wherever the dead are there they are and
Nothing more. But you and I can expect
To see angels in the meadowgrass that look
Like cows -
And wherever we are in paradise
in furnished room without bath and
six flights up
Is all God! We read
To one another, loving the sound of the s’s
Slipping up on the f’s and much is good
Enough to raise the...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It was too late for Man --
But early, yet, for God --
Creation -- impotent to help --
But Prayer -- remained -- Our Side --
How excellent the Heaven --
When Earth -- cannot be had --
How hospitable -- then -- the face
Of our Old Neighbor -- God --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
It is we who are the true aim of universal creation; it
is we who, in the eyes of wisdom, are the essence of divine
regard. The circle of this world is like a ring and,
without doubt, we are the jeweled signet of it.
355...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
O show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Through the forest, followed, Henry made his silky way,
No chickadee was troubled, small moss smiled
on his swift passage.
But there were those ahead when at midday
they met in a clearing and lookt at each other awhile.
To kill was not the message.
He only could go with them-”odds? 20 to one-and-a-half;
pointless. Besides, palaver with the High Chief
might advance THE CAUSE.
Undoubtedly down...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
AS one by one the veils took flight,
The day withdrew, the stars came up.
The spirit issued pale and bright
Filling thy beauty like a cup.
Sacred thy laughter on the air,
Holy thy lightest word that fell,
Proud the innumerable hair
That waved at the enchanter’s spell.
O, Master of the Beautiful,
Creating us from hour to hour,
Give me this vision to the full
To see in...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
The God separated a spirit from Himself and fashioned it into Beauty. He showered upon her all the blessings of gracefulness and kindness. He gave her the cup of happiness and said, "Drink not from this cup unless you forget the past and the future, for happiness is naught but the moment." And He also gave her a cup...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Hear from the spirit world this mystery:
Creation is summed up, O man, in thee;
Angel and demon, man and beast art thou,
Yea, thou art all thou dost appear to be!...Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew,
Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting
Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Head alone shows you in the prodigious act
Of digesting what centuries alone digest:
The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow,
Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts
Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white
Into salt seas. Hercules had a simple time,
Rinsing those stables: a baby's tears would do it.
But who'd volunteer to gulp the Laocoon,
The Dying Gaul and those innumerable pietas
Festering...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
I sing the mighty power of God,
that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad,
and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained
the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at God's command,
and all the stars obey.
I sing the goodness of the Lord,
who filled the earth with food,
Who formed the creatures...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung...Read more of this...
by
James Weldon Johnson
And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world.
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!
Then God reached...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dey is times in life when Nature
Seems to slip a cog an' go,
Jes' a-rattlin' down creation,
Lak an ocean's overflow;
When de worl' jes' stahts a-spinnin'
Lak a picaninny's top,
An' yo' cup o' joy is brimmin'
'Twell it seems about to slop,
An' you feel jes' lak a racah,
Dat is trainin' fu' to trot—
When yo' mammy says de blessin'
An' de co'n pone's hot.
When you set...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.
Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots--if the while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If...Read more of this...
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