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Famous Short World Poems

Famous Short World Poems. Short World Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best World short poems


by Robert Frost
 Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.



by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
as is the sea marvelous
from god’s
hands which sent her forth
to sleep upon the world

and the earth withers
the moon crumbles
one by one
stars flutter into dust

but the sea
does not change
and she goes forth out of hands and
she returns into hands

and is with sleep....

love,
         the breaking

of your
               soul
               upon
my lips

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

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves 
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

by Richard Brautigan
 The petals of the vagina unfold
like Christofer Columbus
taking off his shoes.

Is there anything more beautiful
than the bow of a ship
touching a new world?



by Adelaide Crapsey
Sun and wind and beat of sea,
Great lands stretching endlessly…
Where be bonds to bind the free?
All the world was made for me! 

Alone  Create an image from this poem
by Sara Teasdale
 I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give—
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.

I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;

With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit's pride
To keep me from the peace of those
Who are not lonely, having died.

by Roger McGough
 Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.

It helps
keep my mind off things.

by Alexander Pushkin
 In alien lands I keep the body
Of ancient native rites and things:
I gladly free a little birdie
At celebration of the spring.

I'm now free for consolation,
And thankful to almighty Lord:
At least, to one of his creations
I've given freedom in this world!

by Muhammad Ali
For every struggle that Joe survived,
For every dispute he endured, to rise,
Joe will go down in history
as a model for champions to come.
While Frazier was a man of few words,
Ali was a world of mouth,
but he found his place in history.
Now his heart can express him well.
Joe Frazier was a silent warrior,
whom Ali silently admired.
One could not rise without the other.

by Matsuo Basho
 Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
 the sound of wind.

by Wendell Berry
 When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

by Shel Silverstein
 GOD says to me with a kind 
of smile, "Hey how would you like 
to be God awhile And steer the world?"
"Okay," says I, "I'll give it a try.

Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?"

"Gimme back that wheel," says GOD.
"I don't think you're quite ready YET."

by William Butler Yeats
 Sickness brought me this
Thought, in that scale of his:
Why should I be dismayed
Though flame had burned the whole
World, as it were a coal,
Now I have seen it weighed
Against a soul?

Alone  Create an image from this poem
by Walter de la Mare
 The abode of the nightingale is bare,
Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air,
The fox howls from his frozen lair:
Alas, my loved one is gone,
I am alone:
It is winter.

Once the pink cast a winy smell,
The wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell,
Light in effulgence of beauty fell:
I am alone:
It is winter.

My candle a silent fire doth shed,
Starry Orion hunts o'erhead;
Come moth, come shadow, the world is dead:
Alas, my loved one is gone,
I am alone;
It is winter.

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
They please me not—these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
'Tis true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease
Humanity's confessed disease,
But the spirit-wine of a singing line,
[Pg 127]Or a dew-drop in a honey cup!

by Allen Ginsberg
 I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.

by Louise Gluck
 Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

by Dorothy Parker
 If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.

by Dejan Stojanovic
I love the new sounds of love; 
Only the new cures an old love.

Watching the love making of waves and the shore
I desire to be the wave of love. 

There is no real hate in quarrels,
Only stupidity and lack of love.

The Sun shone upon me
And I shone upon the world with love.

I fly through memory
To find a newborn love.

Sing to me sea, sing to me sky
And the hiding world sprang out from love. 

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 VAIN Love, why do'st thou boast of Wings, 
That cannot help thee to retire! 
When such quick Flames Suspicion brings, 
As do the Heart about thee fire. 
Still Swift to come, but when to go 
Thou shou'd'st be more–Alas! how Slow. 

Lord of the World must surely be 
But thy bare Title at the most; 
Since Jealousy is Lord of Thee, 
And makes such Havock on thy Coast, 

As do's thy pleasant Land deface, 
Yet binds thee faster to the Place.

Me  Create an image from this poem
by Spike Milligan
 Born screaming small into this world-
Living I am.
Occupational therapy twixt birth and death-
What was I before?
What will I be next?
What am I now?
Cruel answer carried in the jesting mind
of a careless God
I will not bend and grovel
When I die. If He says my sins are myriad
I will ask why He made me so imperfect
And he will say 'My chisels were blunt'
I will say 'Then why did you make so
many of me'.

by Henry David Thoreau
 Here lies the body of this world, 
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled. 
This golden youth long since was past, 
Its silver manhood went as fast, 
An iron age drew on at last; 
'Tis vain its character to tell, 
The several fates which it befell, 
What year it died, when 'twill arise, 
We only know that here it lies.

by R S Thomas
 We met
 under a shower
of bird-notes.
 Fifty years passed,
love's moment
 in a world in
servitude to time.
 She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
 closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
 `Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
 partner for
the last dance, And she,
 who in life
had done everything
 with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
 for the shedding
of one sigh no
 heavier than a feather.

Mirage  Create an image from this poem
by Christina Rossetti
 The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.

I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped
For a dream's sake.

Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry