Famous Meteor Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Princess: A Medley: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now...Read more of this...

A Prayer in Spring

by Robert Frost
 OH, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orcahrd white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us...Read more of this...

Summer Night

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
NOW sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; 
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: 
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me. 

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, 5 
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

Now lies the Earth all Dana? to the stars, 
And...Read more of this...

The Cloud

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains...Read more of this...

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...

Detroit Grease Shop Poem

by Philip Levine
 Four bright steel crosses,
universal joints, plucked
out of the burlap sack --
"the heart of the drive train,"
the book says. Stars
on Lemon's wooden palm,
stars that must be capped,
rolled, and anointed,
that have their orders
and their commands as he
has his.

 Under the blue
hesitant light another day
at Automotive
in the city of dreams.
We're all here to count
and be counted, Lemon,
Rosie, Eugene, Luis,
and me, too young...Read more of this...

To a Lady with a Guitar

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ARIEL to Miranda:¡ªTake 
This slave of music for the sake 
Of him who is the slave of thee; 
And teach it all the harmony 
In which thou canst and only thou 5 
Make the delighted spirit glow  
Till joy denies itself again 
And too intense is turn'd to pain.
For by permission and command 
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand 10...Read more of this...

The Dong with a Luminous Nose

by Edward Lear
 When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights; --
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore; --
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: --

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black...Read more of this...

The Portent

by Herman Melville
 Hanging from the beam, 
Slowly swaying (such the law), 
Gaunt the shadow on the green, 
Shenandoah! 
The cut is on the crown 
(Lo, John Brown), 
And the stabs shall heal no more. 

Hidden in the cap 
Is the anguish none can draw; 
So your future veils its face, 
Shenandoah! 
But the streaming beard is shown 
(Weird John Brown), 
The...Read more of this...

Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day

by Marge Piercy
 In flat America, in Chicago, 
Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. 
Forty feet of Corinthian candle 
celebrate Pullman embedded 
lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. 
The Potter Palmers float 
in an island parthenon. 
Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat 
are postmarked with angels and lambs. 

But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned 
in a triangle of trees...Read more of this...

The White Birds

by William Butler Yeats
 I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
A weariness comes from...Read more of this...

Birth-Day Ode 03

by Robert Southey
 And wouldst thou seek the low abode
Where PEACE delights to dwell?
Pause Traveller on thy way of life!
With many a snare and peril rife
Is that long labyrinth of road:
Dark is the vale of years before
Pause Traveller on thy way!
Nor dare the dangerous path explore
Till old EXPERIENCE comes to lend his leading ray.

Not he who comes with lanthorn light
Shall guide thy...Read more of this...

On Death

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
And...Read more of this...

To Thomas Butts

by William Blake
 TO my friend Butts I write 
My first vision of light, 
On the yellow sands sitting. 
The sun was emitting 
His glorious beams 
From Heaven’s high streams. 
Over sea, over land, 
My eyes did expand 
Into regions of air, 
Away from all care; 
Into regions of fire, 
Remote from desire; 
The light of the morning 
Heaven’s mountains adorning: 
In...Read more of this...

Dæmonic Love

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Man was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth;
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured,
Next his heart the fireside band
Of mother, father, sister, stand;
Names from awful childhood heard,
Throbs of a wild religion stirred,
Their good was heaven, their harm was vice,
Till Beauty came to snap all ties,
The maid, abolishing the past,
With lotus-wine obliterates
Dear memory's...Read more of this...

The Bard

by Thomas Gray
 Pindaric Ode

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the...Read more of this...

The Old Song

by G K Chesterton
 A livid sky on London
And like the iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,
As digging lets the daylight on the suken...Read more of this...

227. Verses on Friars' Carse Hermitage (First Version)

by Robert Burns
 THOU whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these maxims on thy soul.


Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost:
Hope not sunshine every hour,
Fear not clouds will always lour.


Happiness is but a name,
Make content and ease thy aim,
Ambition is a meteor-gleam;
Fame, an idle restless dream;


Peace, the tend’rest...Read more of this...

Through the strait pass of suffering --

by Emily Dickinson
 Through the strait pass of suffering --
The Martyrs -- even -- trod.
Their feet -- upon Temptations --
Their faces -- upon God --

A stately -- shriven -- Company --
Convulsion -- playing round --
Harmless -- as streaks of Meteor --
Upon a Planet's Bond --

Their faith -- the everlasting troth --
Their Expectation -- fair --
The Needle -- to the North Degree --
Wades...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...

177. Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair

by Robert Burns
 THE LAMP of day, with-ill presaging glare,
 Dim, cloudy, sank beneath the western wave;
Th’ inconstant blast howl’d thro’ the dark’ning air,
 And hollow whistled in the rocky cave.


Lone as I wander’d by each cliff and dell,
 Once the lov’d haunts of Scotia’s royal train; 1
Or mus’d where limpid streams, once hallow’d well, 2
 Or mould’ring ruins mark the sacred...Read more of this...

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;
The firefly wakens, waken thou with me. 

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars, 
And all thy heart lies...Read more of this...

The Indian To His Love

by William Butler Yeats
 The island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

How we alone of...Read more of this...

Picnic Lightning

by Billy Collins
 It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within....Read more of this...

To A Cloud

by William Cullen Bryant
 Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair,
Swimming in the pure quiet air!
Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below
Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow;
Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train
As cool it comes along the grain.
Beautiful cloud! I would I were with thee
In thy calm way o'er land and sea:
To rest on thy unrolling skirts, and look
On...Read more of this...

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