Famous Out Of This World Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Mid-World

by George William Russell
 THIS is the red, red region
Your heart must journey through:
Your pains will here be legion
And joy be death for you.


Rejoice to-day: to-morrow
A turning tide shall flow
Through infinite tones of sorrow
To reach an equal woe.


You pass by love unheeding
To gain the goal you long—
But my heart, my heart is bleeding:
I cannot sing this song....Read more of this...

A New World

by George William Russell
 I WHO had sought afar from earth
 The faery land to meet,
Now find content within its girth
 And wonder nigh my feet.


To-day a nearer love I choose
 And seek no distant sphere;
For aureoled by faery dews
 The dear brown breasts appear.


With rainbow radiance come and go
 The airy breaths of day;
And eve is all a pearly glow
 With moonlit...Read more of this...

Tell me, friend, have I acquired riches in this world?

by Omar Khayyam
Tell me, friend, have I acquired riches in this world?
No. Have I given myself up to time as it was slipping
away? No. I am the torch of joy; but that torch once
extinguished, I am nothing. I am the cup of Djem [the
royal cup], but that cup once broken, I am no longer
anything....Read more of this...

Become not a prey to sorrow in this world of iniquity;

by Omar Khayyam
Become not a prey to sorrow in this world of iniquity;
recall not to thy soul the memory of those who are no
longer here; give up thy heart only to a friend with sweet
lips and fairy-like in form and never be deprived of
wine, or throw life to the winds....Read more of this...

The world is baffled in its search for Thee,

by Omar Khayyam
The world is baffled in its search for Thee,
Wealth cannot find Thee, no, nor poverty;
Thou'rt very near us, but our ears are deaf,
Our eyes are blinded that we may not see!...Read more of this...

This World is not Conclusion

by Emily Dickinson
 This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond --
Invisible, as Music --
But positive, as Sound --
It beckons, and it baffles --
Philosophy -- don't know --
And through a Riddle, at the last --
Sagacity, must go --
To guess it, puzzles scholars --
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown --
Faith slips -- and laughs, and rallies --
Blushes, if any...Read more of this...

News Of The Gold World Of May

by Delmore Schwartz
 News of the Gold World of May in Holland Michigan:
"Wooden shoes will clatter again
 on freshly scrubbed streets--"

The tulip will arise and reign again from awnings and
 windows
 of all colors and forms
 its vine, verve and valentine curves

 upon the city streets, the public grounds 
 and private lawns
 (wherever it is conceivable
 that a bulb might take...Read more of this...

Song on the End of the World

by Czeslaw Milosz
 On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in...Read more of this...

We meet but chagrin and misfortune in this world,

by Omar Khayyam
We meet but chagrin and misfortune in this world,
which serves us as a tent for the time. Alas! No problem
of creation has been solved for us, and behold! we
leave it with hearts full of regret at knowing naught
about it.
280...Read more of this...

See! from the world what profit have I gained?

by Omar Khayyam
See! from the world what profit have I gained?
What fruitage of my life in hand retained?
What use is Jamshid's goblet, once 'tis crushed?
What pleasure's torch, when once its light has waned?...Read more of this...

Oh Could We Do With This World of Ours

by Thomas Moore
 Oh, could we do with this world of ours 
As thou dost with thy garden bowers, 
Reject the weeds and keep the flowers, 
What a heaven on earth we'd make it! 
So bright a dwelling should be our own, 
So warranted free from sigh or frown, 
That angels soon would be coming down, 
By the week or month to...Read more of this...

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

by Wallace Stevens
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is...Read more of this...

One World

by Henry Van Dyke
 "The worlds in which we live are two
The world 'I am' and the world 'I do.'"

The worlds in which we live at heart are one,
The world "I am," the fruit of "I have done";
And underneath these worlds of flower and fruit,
The world "I love,"--the only living root....Read more of this...

Never in this false world on friends rely

by Omar Khayyam
Never in this false world on friends rely
(I give this counsel confidentially),
Put up with pain, and seek no antidote,
Endure your grief, and ask no sympathy!...Read more of this...

On the World you colored

by Emily Dickinson
 On the World you colored
Morning painted rose --
Idle his Vermillion
Aimlessly crept the Glows
Over Realms of Orchards
I the Day before
Conquered with the Robin --
Misery, how fair
Till your wrinkled Finger
Shored the sun away
Midnight's awful Pattern
In the Goods of Day --...Read more of this...

To The Accuser Who is The God of This World

by William Blake
 Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce
And dost not know the Garment from the Man
Every Harlot was a Virgin once
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan

Tho thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine 
Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill...Read more of this...

These Strangers in a foreign World

by Emily Dickinson
 These Strangers, in a foreign World,
Protection asked of me --
Befriend them, lest Yourself in Heaven
Be found a Refugee --...Read more of this...

In this World

by Wendell Berry
 The hill pasture, an open place among the trees,
tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses
are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill
dark floodwater moves down the river.
The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.
I have climbed up to water the horses
and now sit and rest, high on the hillside,
letting the day gather and pass. Below...Read more of this...

Dream Song 66: All virtues enter into this world:)

by John Berryman
 'All virtues enter into this world:')
A Buddhist, doused in the street, serenely burned.
The Secretary of State for War,
winking it over, screwed a redhaired whore.
Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week.
A journalism doggy took a leak

against absconding coon ('but take one virtue,
without which a man can hardly hold his own')
the sun in the willow
shivers itself & shakes itself green-yellow
(Abba Pimen groaned,...Read more of this...

World Below the Brine The

by Walt Whitman
 THE world below the brine; 
Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, 
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the thick tangle, the openings,
 and
 the pink turf, 
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold—the play of light
 through
 the water, 
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment
 of
 the...Read more of this...

Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World

by William Bronk
 Whether what we sense of this world
is the what of this world only, or the what 
of which of several possible worlds
--which what?--something of what we sense 
may be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense.
For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance
of travelers, eating foreign foods, trying words
that twist the tongue, to feel...Read more of this...

The Riddle of the World

by Alexander Pope
 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his...Read more of this...

Before The World Was Made

by William Butler Yeats
 If I make the lashes dark 
And the eyes more bright 
And the lips more scarlet, 
Or ask if all be right 
From mirror after mirror, 
No vanity's displayed: 
I'm looking for the face I had 
Before the world was made. 

What if I look upon a man 
As though on my beloved, 
And my blood be cold the...Read more of this...

Freedom And The World

by Victor Hugo
 {Inscription under a Statue of the Virgin and Child, at Guernsey.—The 
 poet sees in the emblem a modern Atlas, i.e., Freedom supporting the 
 World.} 
 
 ("Le peuple est petit.") 


 Weak is the People—but will grow beyond all other— 
 Within thy holy arms, thou fruitful victor-mother! 
 O Liberty, whose conquering flag is never furled—...Read more of this...

The World And I

by Laura Riding Jackson
 This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun.
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
What a world of awkwardness!
What hostile implements of sense!
Perhaps this is as close a meaning
As perhaps becomes such knowing.
Else I think the world and I
Must live together as strangers and die—
A sour love, each doubtful whether
Was...Read more of this...

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