Famous World Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous 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 world poems. These examples illustrate what a famous world poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Omar Khayyam
To the cares of this world, let us not accord as much
value, even, as to a grain of barley; oh! let us be happy!
If we have something for breakfast, we may have nothing
for dinner; oh! let us be happy! Although nothing
well cooked comes to us from the kitchen, let us not address
our troublesome prayers to any one; oh! let us...Read more of this...
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...
by
Omar Khayyam
This world has not derived any advantage from my
coming here below. Its glory and its dignity are equally
unaffected by my departure. My two ears have never
heard any one say why I have come, or why I am forced
to go again....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hood
The world is with me, and its many cares,
Its woes--its wants--the anxious hopes and fears
That wait on all terrestrial affairs--
The shades of former and of future years--
Forboding fancies and prophetic tears,
Quelling a spirit that was once elate.
Heavens! what a wilderness the world appears,
Where youth, and mirth, and health are out of date;...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."
My grandfather in his prime could outshout
the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles
along the river. Hamtramck hungered
for yellow freestone peaches, downriver
wakened from a dream of work, Zug Island danced
into the bright day glad to be alive.
Full-figured women in their negligees
streamed into the...Read more of this...
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...
by
Emily Dickinson
I lost a World -- the other day!
Has Anybody found?
You'll know it by the Row of Stars
Around its forehead bound.
A Rich man -- might not notice it --
Yet -- to my frugal Eye,
Of more Esteem than Ducats --
Oh find it -- Sir -- for me!...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The going from a world we know
To one a wonder still
Is like the child's adversity
Whose vista is a hill,
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything unknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Some are the brothers of all humankind,
And own them, whatsoever their estate;
And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind
With enmity for man's unguarded fate.
For some there is a music all day long
Like flutes in Paradise, they are so glad;
And there is hell's eternal under-song
Of curses and the cries of men gone mad....Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
The world is woven all of dream and error
And but one sureness in our truth may lie--
That when we hold to aught our thinking's mirror
We know it not by knowing it thereby.
For but one side of things the mirror knows,
And knows it colded from its solidness.
A double lie its truth is; what it shows
By true show's false and nowhere by...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
He lay in the middle of the world, and twicht.
More Sparine for Pelides,
human (half) & down here as he is,
with probably insulting mail to open
and certainly unworthy words to hear
and his unforgiving memory.
-”I seldom go to films. They are too exciting,
said the Honourable Possum.
-”It takes me so long to read the 'paper,
said to me one day a novelist hot...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
Should the wide world roll away,
Leaving black terror,
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential,
If thou and thy white arms were there,
And the fall to doom a long way....Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhatten Bay,
The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away:
Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand
To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.
No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee,
While friends are fighting...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Philips
Wee falsely think it due unto our friends,
That we should grieve for their too early ends:
He that surveys the world with serious eys,
And stripps Her from her grosse and weak disguise,
Shall find 'tis injury to mourn their fate;
He only dy's untimely who dy's Late.
For if 'twere told to children in the womb,
To what a stage of mischief they must...Read more of this...
by
Mark Doty
Today the Masons are auctioning
their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans,
gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes
labeled inside the collar "Potentate"
and "Vizier." Here their chairs, blazoned
with the Masons' sign, huddled
like convalescents, lean against one another
on the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles
the hierophants carried in parades;
here's a splendid golden staff...Read more of this...
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...
by
Omar Khayyam
Since the world is perishable, I would devise some
scheme for it; I would think only of joy, or only of the
limpid wine. They say to me: Would God might make
thee renounce it! Nay, would that He might not give
such command, for if He gave it, I would not obey!...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Hear from the spirit world this mystery:
Creation is summed up, O man, in thee;
Angel and demon, man and beast art thou,
Yea, thou art all thou dost appear to be!...Read more of this...
by
Eliza Cook
THREE summers have gone since the first time we met, love,
And still 'tis in vain that I ask thee to wed ;
I hear no reply but a gentle " Not yet, love,"
With a smile of your lip, and a shake of your head.
Ah ! how oft have I whispered, how oft have I sued thee,
And breathed my soul's question...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Half the people in the world love the other half,
half the people hate the other half.
Must I because of this half and that half go wandering
and changing ceaselessly like rain in its cycle,
must I sleep among rocks, and grow rugged like
the trunks of olive trees,
and hear the moon barking at me,
and...Read more of this...
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...
by
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Doors were left open in heaven again:
drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages
around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters
flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,
its last angles caught in sopped
newspaper wings and billowing plastic —
all this in one American street.
Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide
recedes, incense is lit, an infant...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
What is the world? A caravanserai,
A pied pavilion of night and day;
A feast whereat a thousand Jamshids sat,
A couch whereon a thousand Bahrams lay....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O careless men! be not duped by this world, since
you know its pursuits. Throw not to the wind your
precious lives; hasten to seek a friend [God], and quickly
drink of wine.
306...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Oh, how I love Humanity,
With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,
Who never will be English!
The International Idea,
The largest and the clearest,
Is welding all the nations now,
Except the one that's nearest.
This compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In...Read more of this...
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