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Famous Shiver Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...up every other tie;
Therefore comes an hour from Jove
Which his ruthless will defies,
And the dogs of Fate unties.
Shiver the palaces of glass,
Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls
Where in bright art each god and sibyl dwelt
Secure as in the Zodiack's belt;
And the galleries and halls
Wherein every Siren sung,
Like a meteor pass.
For this fortune wanted root
In the core of God's abysm,
Was a weed of self and schism:
And ever the Dæmonic Love
Is the ancestor of wars,
An...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...n a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew
A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;
So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver
The happy chance: so happy, I was fain
To follow it upon the open plain,
And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!
A wonder, fair as any I have told--
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
Through the cool depth.--It moved as if to flee--
I started up, when lo! refreshfully,
There came upon...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...he gates;
Till, as with clamor
Of axe and hammer,
Chained streams that stammer
And struggle in straits
Burst bonds that shiver,
And thaws deliver
The roaring river in stormy spates.

In fierce March weather
White waves break tether,
And whirled together
At either hand,
Like weeds uplifted,
The tree-trunks rifted
In spars are drifted,
Like foam or sand,
Past swamp and sallow
And reed-beds callow,
Through pool and shallow,
To wind and lee,
Till, no more tongue-tied,
Full fl...Read more of this...

by Rossetti, Christina
...r> 
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, 
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; 
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, 
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot. 
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge, 
I live alone, I look to die alone: 
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge, 
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back, 
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown 
On sometime summer's unreturning track....Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e earth are a-thrill, --
And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river, --
And look where a passionate shiver
Expectant is bending the blades
Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades, --
And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting,
Are beating
The dark overhead as my heart beats, -- and steady and free
Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea --
(Run home, little streams,
With your lapfulls of stars and dreams), --
And a sailor unseen is hoisti...Read more of this...



by Angelou, Maya
...t triangles,
Pudgy HANDS bunched on layered hips
Where bones idle under years of fatback
And lima beans.

Her jowls shiver in accusation
Of crimes cliched by Repetition. 
Her children, strangers
To childhood's TOYS, play
Best the games of darkened doorways,
Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
Other people's property.

Too fat to whore,
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
Into a den of bereaucrats for her portion.

...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...Dr. Donne, and the blue river
Would murmur through the reading, and a stir Of birds and bees 
make the white petals shiver,
And one or two would flutter prone and lie Spotting the smooth-clipped 
grass. The days went by
Threaded with talk and verses. Green 
leaves pushed Through blossoms stubbornly.
Gervase, unconscious of dishonesty,
Fell into strong and watchful loving, free
He thought, since always would his lips be hushed.

XXVII
But lips do not stay s...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...and murky air,
And the thronged streets, he did espy
What poets know and prophesy;
And said, with voice that made them shiver 
And clung like music in my brain,
And which the mute walls spoke again
Prolonging it with deepened strain--
'Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death;
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always he...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people- ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor w...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...arret to basement, 
She stood, with amazement, 
Houseless by night. 

The bleak wind of March 
Made her tremble and shiver; 
But not the dark arch, 
Or the black flowing river: 
Mad from life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery, 
Swift to be hurl'd— 
Anywhere, anywhere 
Out of the world! 

In she plunged boldly— 
No matter how coldly 
The rough river ran— 
Over the brink of it, 
Picture it—think of it, 
Dissolute Man! 
Lave in it, drink of it, 
Then, if you can! 

Take he...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...,
And slowly floated
A single note which spread and spread
Till it filled the room with a shimmer like gold,
And noises shivered throughout its length,
And tried its strength.
They pulled it, and tore it,
And the stuff waned thinner, but still it bore 
it.
Then a wide rent
Split the arching tent,
And balls of fire spurted through,
Spitting yellow, and mauve, and blue.
One by one they were quenched as they fell,
Only the blue burned steadily.
Paler and paler it...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...inscrutable appeal
Which made the very frame of Nature quiver,
And every thrilling nerve and fiber feel
So ague-like a shiver.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!

Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread,
But through one gloomy entrance pointing mostly,
The while some secret inspiration said,
“That chamber is the ghostly!”

Across the door no gossamer fest...Read more of this...

by Thompson, Francis
...br>
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my
mind.

Such is. What is to be ?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds,
Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.
Those shaken mists a space unsettle,
Then round the half-glimpse d turrets, slowly wash again.
But not 'ere ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...und an island there below, 
The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 10 
Little breezes dusk and shiver 
Thro' the wave that runs for ever 
By the island in the river 
Flowing down to Camelot. 
Four gray walls, and four gray towers, 15 
Overlook a space of flowers, 
And the silent isle imbowers 
The Lady of Shalott. 

By the margin, willow-veil'd, 
Slide the heavy barges trail'd 20 
By slow horses; and unhail'd 
The shallop flitteth ...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutter across the ocean! France rend down thy dungeon; 
Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling, 
And weep! 
In her trembling hands she took the new, born terror howling;
On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the
a...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...r my fate, 
I am no changeling — 'tis too late: 
The reed in storms may bow and quiver, 
Then rise again; the tree must shiver. 
What Venice made me, I must be, 
Her foe in all, save love to thee: 
But thou art safe: oh, fly with me!" 
He turn'd, but she is gone! 
Nothing is there but the column stone. 
Hath she sunk in the earth, or melted in air? 
He saw not — he knew not — but nothing is there. 

XXII. 

The night is past, and shines the sun 
As if that mor...Read more of this...

by Strand, Mark
...waited,
and it seemed that I was no longer reading.
I heard the wind passing
like a stream of sighs
and I heard the shiver of leaves
in the trees outside the window.
It would be in the book.
Everything would be there.
I looked at your face
and I read the eyes, the nose, the mouth . . .

5
If only there were a perfect moment in the book;
if only we could live in that moment,
we could being the book again
as if we had not written it,
as if we were no...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...away; I will not confess to you! 
His black biretta clings like a hangman's cap; under his twitching fingers the beads shiver and click, 
As he mumbles in his corner, the shadow deepens upon him; 
I will not confess! . . . 

Is he there or is it intenser shadow? 
Dark huddled coilings from the obscene depths, 
Black, formless shadow, 
Shadow. 
Doors creak; from secret parts of the chateau come the scuffle and worry of rats. 

Orange light drips from the g...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved...Read more of this...

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