Famous Galaxy Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Inner Space

by Dejan Stojanovic
Entering a cell, penetrating deep 
As a flying saucer 
To find a new galaxy 
Would be an honorable task 
For a new scientist interested 
More in the inner state of the soul 
Than in outer space.
...Read more of this...

In the Next Galaxy

by Ruth Stone
In the Next Galaxy 
Things will be different. 
No one will lose their sight, 
their hearing, their gallbladder. 
It will be all Catskills with brand 
new wrap-around verandas. 
The idea of Hitler will not have vibrated yet. 
While back here, 
they are still cleaning out 
pockets of wrinkled 
Nazis hiding in Argentina. 
But in the next galaxy, 
certain planets will...Read more of this...

Relativity

by Robert William Service
 I looked down on a daisied lawn
To where a host of tiny eyes
Of snow and gold from velvet shone
And made me think of starry skies.

I looked up to the vasty night
Where stars were very small indeed,
And in their galaxy of light
They made me think of daised mead.

I took a daisy in my hold;
Its snowy rays were tipped with rose,
And...Read more of this...

Dream Song 50: In a motion of night they massed nearer my post

by John Berryman
 In a motion of night they massed nearer my post.
I hummed a short blues. When the stars went out
I studied my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most
of my pencils were sharp.

This edge of the galaxy has often seen
a defence so stiff, but it could only go
one way.
-”Mr Bones, your troubles...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

After Years

by Ted Kooser
 Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and...Read more of this...

The Primrose

by John Donne
 Upon this Primrose hill,
Where, if Heav'n would distil
A shower of rain, each several drop might go
To his own primrose, and grow manna so;
And where their form and their infinity
Make a terrestrial Galaxy,
As the small stars do in the sky:
I walk to find a true Love; and I see
That 'tis not a mere woman that is she,
But must or more...Read more of this...

Down from the Mountain

by Li Po
 As down Mount Emerald at eve I came,
The mountain moon went all the way with me.
Backward I looked, to see the heights aflame
With a pale light that glimmered eerily.

A little lad undid the rustic latch
As hand in hand your cottage we did gain,
Where green limp tendrils at our cloaks did catch,
And dim bamboos o'erhung a shadowy lane.

Gaily I cried,...Read more of this...

Sky Diving

by Nikki Giovanni
Sky DivingI hang on the edge   of this universe   singing off-key   talking too loud   embracing myself   to cushion the fall    I shall tumble   into deep space   never in this form   or with this feeling   to return to earth     It is not tragic   ...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

Baseball and Writing

by Marianne Moore
 Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers...Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

Imagination

by John Davidson
 There is a dish to hold the sea, 
A brazier to contain the sun, 
A compass for the galaxy, 
A voice to wake the dead and done! 

That minister of ministers, 
Imagination, gathers up 
The undiscovered Universe, 
Like jewels in a jasper cup. 

Its flame can mingle north and south; 
Its accent with the thunder strive; 
The ruddy sentence...Read more of this...

On that dread day, when wrath shall rend the sky,

by Omar Khayyam
On that dread day, when wrath shall rend the sky,
And darkness dim the bright stars' galaxy,
I'll seize the Loved One by His skirt, and cry,
«Why hast Thou doomed these guiltless ones to die?»...Read more of this...

Gravelly Run

by A R Ammons
 I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
 of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
 by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and...Read more of this...

Nagasaki Days

by Allen Ginsberg
 I -- A Pleasant Afternoon

 for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup


One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
 tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
 words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest -- the wild wind blew thru
 blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central...Read more of this...

Gods Skallywags

by Robert William Service
 The God of Scribes looked down and saw
The bitter band of seven,
Who had outraged his holy law
And lost their hope of Heaven:
Came Villon, petty thief and pimp,
And obscene Baudelaire,
And Byron with his letcher limp,
And Poe with starry stare.

And Wilde who lived his hell on earth,
And Burns, the baudy bard,
And Francis Thompson, from his birth
Malevolently starred. . . .
As like...Read more of this...

Sounds of Imagination

by Dejan Stojanovic
I imagined I was a mountain 
Then I became a cloud over that mountain 
Lightning and thunder pummeled the mountain 
Pierced the heart of the earth, 
Becoming lava and exploding as a volcano. 

I imagined I was a star 
Light traveling into space 
Then I grew as a tree 
With leaves of galaxies eating the light 
Becoming the angel of...Read more of this...

The Lady of Shalott

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
ON either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 
And thro' the field the road runs by 
To many-tower'd Camelot; 5 
And up and down the people go, 
Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below, 
The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 10 
Little breezes...Read more of this...

Heroic Stanzas

by John Dryden
 Consecrated to the Glorious Memory of His 
Most Serene and Renowned Highness, Oliver,
Late Lord Protector of This Commonwealth, etc.
(Oliver Cromwell)

Written After the Celebration of his Funeral 


1

And now 'tis time; for their officious haste, 
Who would before have borne him to the sky, 
Like eager Romans ere all rites were past 
Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Galaxy poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace