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Famous Ague Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...ning on young men’s shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums? 
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for fire-locks, and level
 them?


If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President’s marshal; 
If you groan such groans, you might balk the government cannon. 

For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those toss’d arms, and let your white hair be;
Here gape your great grand-sons—their wi...Read more of this...



by Bradstreet, Anne
...el
14 My weak'ned fainting body now to reel?
15 This physic-purging-potion I have taken
16 Will bring Consumption or an Ague quaking,
17 Unless some Cordial thou fetch from high,
18 Which present help may ease my malady.
19 If I decease, dost think thou shalt survive?
20 Or by my wasting state dost think to thrive?
21 Then weigh our case, if 't be not justly sad.
22 Let me lament alone, while thou art glad. 

New England. 

23 And thus, alas, your state you mu...Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...> 
Raineth drop and staineth slop, 
And how the wind doth ramm! 
Sing: Goddamm. 

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, 
An ague hath my ham. 
Freezeth river, turneth liver, 
Damn you, sing: Goddamm. 

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm, 
So 'gainst the winter's balm. 

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm. 
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM. 

A parody of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Cuckoo Song...Read more of this...

by Blunden, Edmund
...r>

    But the old forge and mill are shut and done,
    The tower is crumbling down, stone by stone falls;
    An ague doubt comes creeping in the sun,
    The sun himself shudders, the day appals,
    The concourse of a thousand tempests sprawls
    Over the blue-lipped lakes and maddening groves,
    Like agonies of gods the clouds are whirled,
    The stormwind like the demon huntsman roves —
    Still stands my friend, though all's to chaos hurled,
    The un...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...And he sat down; when, lo! in the sad sky, 
 The selfsame Eye on the horizon's verge, 
 And the wretch shook as in an ague fit. 
 "Hide me!" he cried; and all his watchful sons, 
 Their finger on their lip, stared at their sire. 
 Cain said to Jabal (father of them that dwell 
 In tents): "Spread here the curtain of thy tent," 
 And they spread wide the floating canvas roof, 
 And made it fast and fixed it down with lead. 
 "You see naught now," said Zillah then, fai...Read more of this...



by Walcott, Derek
...to repeat.

Frightened and starved, with divine fever
Osip Mandelstam shook, and every
metaphor shuddered him with ague,
each vowel heavier than a boundary stone,
"to the rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva,"

but now that fever is a fire whose glow
warms our hands, Joseph, as we grunt like primates
exchanging gutturals in this wintry cave
of a brown cottage, while in drifts outside
mastodons force their systems through the snow....Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...ve,
And shield the bird unfledged, since gone the parent dove.

Christian! I am the foeman of thy foe;
Our wampum league thy brethren did embrace:
Upon the Michigan, three moons ago,
We launch'd our pirogues for the bison chase,
And with the Hurons planted for a space,
With true and faithful hands, the olive-stalk;
But snakes are in the bosoms of their race,
And though they held with us a friendly talk,
The hollow peace-tree fell beneath their tomahawk!

It was encamping ...Read more of this...

by Donne, John
...eeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague; save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with feare....Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...good for the gout. 

For the Bark was a communication from God and is sovereign. 

For the method of curing an ague by terror is exaction. 

For Exaction is the most accursed of all things, because it brought the Lord to the cross, his betrayers and murderers being such from their exaction. 

For an Ague is the terror of the body, when the blessing of God is withheld for a season. 

For benevolence is the best remedy in the first place and the bark in the...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...stantial rev'nue by't,
Denied he'd ever deign to treat,
Till on your knees and at his feet?
And feel you not a trifling ague
From Van's "Delenda est Carthago?
For this now Britain has projected,
Think you she has not means t' effect it?
Has she not set at work all engines
To spirit up the native Indians,
Send on your backs the tawney band,
With each an hatchet in his hand,
T' amuse themselves with scalping knives.
And butcher children and your wives;
And paid them for you...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...My God! What's that?" Her 
staring eyes are big.

XXXIV
Revulsed emotion set her body shaking As though 
she had an ague. Gervase swore,
Jumped to his feet in such a dreadful taking His face was ghastly 
with the look it wore.
Crouching and slipping through the trees, a man In worn, blue 
livery, a humpbacked thing,
Made off. But turned every few steps 
to gaze At Eunice, and to fling
Vile looks and gestures back. "The ruffian!
By Christ's Death! I will sp...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...issed its aim
And misses teased the hunger of his brain.
His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand
Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand
From the best sandbags after years of rain.
But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,
Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld
For torture of lying machinally shelled,
At the pleasure of this world's Powers who'd run amok.

He'd seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol,
Their people never...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...e soul all still,
And the wild tempest of the passions husht
In one deep calm; the heart, no more diseas'd
By the quick ague fits of hope and fear,
Quietly cold!
Presiding Powers look down!
In vain to you I pour'd my earnest prayers,
In vain I sung your praises: chiefly thou
VENUS! ungrateful Goddess, whom my lyre
Hymn'd with such full devotion! Lesbian groves,
Witness how often at the languid hour
Of summer twilight, to the melting song
Ye gave your choral echoes! Grecian Ma...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...key to that 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 g...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...Lord, how I am all ague, when I seek
What I have treasur'd in my memory! 
Since, if my soul make even with the week, 
Each seventh note by right is due to thee.
I find there quarries of pil'd vanities, 
But shreds of holiness, that dare not venture
To show their face, since cross to thy decrees: 
There the circumference earth is, heav'n the centre.
In so much dregs the...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...bstitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisone...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;

'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest;
For he was drowned, and I've the ague....Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs