Famous Earth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Earth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous earth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous earth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
George William Russell
OH, the sudden wings arising from the ploughed fields brown
Showered aloft in spray of song the wild-bird twitter floats
O’er the unseen fount awhile, and then comes dropping down
Nigh the cool brown earth to hush enraptured notes.
Far within a dome of trembling opal throbs the fire,
Mistily its rain of diamond lances shed below
Touches eyes and brows and...Read more of this...
by
Henry David Thoreau
Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong,
Which asks no duties and no conscience?
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful path
In some far summer stratum of the sky,
While stars with their cold shine bedot her way.
The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky,
And far and near upon the leafless shrubs
The snow dust still emits a silver light.
Under...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
"Take the world!" Zeus exclaimed from his throne in the skies
To the children of man--"take the world I now give;
It shall ever remain as your heirloom and prize,
So divide it as brothers, and happily live."
Then all who had hands sought their share to obtain,
The young and the aged made haste to appear;
The husbandman seized on the fruits of the...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
Once upon a time there was a person
He was walking along
He met the full burning moon
Rolling slowly twoards him
Crushing the stones and houses by the wayside.
She shut his eyes from the glare.
He drew his dagger
And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
The cry that quit the moon's wounds
Circled the earth.
The moon shrank, like a punctured airship,
Shrank, shrank, smaller, smaller,
Till it was...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Somewhere upon the general Earth
Itself exist Today --
The Magic passive but extant
That consecrated me --
Indifferent Seasons doubtless play
Where I for right to be --
Would pay each Atom that I am
But Immortality --
Reserving that but just to prove
Another Date of Thee --
Oh God of Width, do not for us
Curtail Eternity!...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
DOES the earth grow grey with grief
For her hero darling fled?
Though her vales let fall no leaf,
In our hearts her tears are shed.
Still the stars laugh on above:
Not to them her grief is said;
Mourning for her hero love
In our hearts the tears are shed.
We her children mourn for him,
Mourn the elder hero dead;
In the twilight grey and dim
In our...Read more of this...
by
James Joyce
Strings in the earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
There's music along the river
For Love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The inhabitants of the tomb are returned to earth in
dust; the atoms [of which they are composed] are scattered
here and there, separated one from the other.
Alas! what is this drink in which the human race is
soaked and which holds it thus in dizzy ignorance of all
things, even to the day of doom?...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
When cold in the earth lies the friend thou hast loved,
Be his faults and his follies forgot by thee then;
Or, if from their slumber the veil be removed,
Weep o'er them in silence, and close it again.
And oh! if 'tis pain to remember how far
From the pathways of light he was tempted to roam,
Be...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Thou hast formed me of earth and of water, what can
I do? Whether I be wool or silk, it is Thou that hast
woven, and what can I do? The good that I do, the
evil that I am guilty of, were alike predestined by Thee;
what can I do?
346...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go:
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister world, and rise
To glass herself in dewey eyes
That watch me from the glen below.
Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne,
Dip forward under starry light,...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
FROM the cool and dark-lipped furrows
Breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland’s purple plumage
To the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle
Every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
And enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses,
Turns and, wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit
Finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
With the eyes of God
Over fields a slave...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
God loafs around heaven,
without a shape
but He would like to smoke His cigar
or bite His fingernails
and so forth.
God owns heaven
but He craves the earth,
the earth with its little sleepy caves,
its bird resting at the kitchen window,
even its murders lined up like broken chairs,
even its writers digging into their souls
with jackhammers,
even its hucksters selling their animals
for gold,
even its babies sniffing...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive,
Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!
Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast,
Issued in some strange way, thou lying...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Gathered into the Earth,
And out of story --
Gathered so that strange Fame --
That lonesome Glory
That hath no omen here -- but Awe --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
Shall Earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now ?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall nature cease to bow ?
Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its useless roving -
Come back and dwell with me -
I know my mountain breezes
Enchant annd soothe thee still -
I know my sunshine pleases
Despite thy wayward will -
When day...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
The day of fire is coming, the thrush,
will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket,
the beetle will sink like a giant bulldozer,
and at the breaking of the morning the houses
will turn into oil and will in their tides
of fire be a becoming and an ending, a red fan.
What then, man in your easy...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE WONDER of the world is o’er:
The magic from the sea is gone:
There is no unimagined shore,
No islet yet to venture on.
The Sacred Hazels’ blooms are shed,
The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.
Oh, what is worth this lore of age
If time shall never bring us back
Our battle with the gods to wage
Reeling along the starry track.
The battle...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
The little lives of earth and form,
Of finding food, and keeping warm,
Are not like ours, and yet
A kinship lingers nonetheless:
We hanker for the homeliness
Of den, and hole, and set.
And this identity we feel
- Perhaps not right, perhaps not real -
Will link us constantly;
I see the rock, the clay, the chalk,
The flattened grass, the swaying stalk,
And...Read more of this...
by
Nazim Hikmet
You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
like a scorpion.
You're like a sparrow, my brother,
always in a sparrow's flutter.
You're like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
like the mouth of an extinct volcano.
Not one,
not five--
unfortunately, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
when the cloaked drover raises his...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
So much of Heaven has gone from Earth
That there must be a Heaven
If only to enclose the Saints
To Affidavit given.
The Missionary to the Mole
Must prove there is a Sky
Location doubtless he would plead
But what excuse have I?
Too much of Proof affronts Belief
The Turtle will not try
Unless you leave him -- then return
And he has hauled away....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?
I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?
I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that?...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Letter is a joy of Earth --
It is denied the Gods --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Should you come to people the whole earth, that action
would not make a saddened soul rejoice. It would be
more to thy advantage to enslave a free man, through
thy gentleness, than to give freedom to a thousand slaves.
390...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Earth poems.