10 Best Famous Fevers Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Fevers poems. This is a select list of the best famous Fevers poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Fevers poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of fevers poems.

• All Famous Fevers Poems

 Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either-neither,
Simple were so well compounded.

That it cried how true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.

Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS.

Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:--
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be:
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

 I 

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: 

Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, 
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; 
horror the corposant and compass rose. 

Middle Passage: 
voyage through death 
to life upon these shores. 

"10 April 1800-- 
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says 
their moaning is a prayer for death, 
our and their own. Some try to starve themselves. 
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter 
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under." 

Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann: 

Standing to America, bringing home 
black gold, black ivory, black seed. 

Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones 
New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes. 

Jesus Saviour Pilot Me 
Over Life's Tempestuous Sea 


We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord, 
safe passage to our vessels bringing 
heathen souls unto Thy chastening. 

Jesus Saviour 

"8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick 
with fear, but writing eases fear a little 
since still my eyes can see these words take shape 
upon the page & so I write, as one 
would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding, 
but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune 
follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning 
tutelary gods). Which one of us 
has killed an albatross? A plague among 
our blacks--Ophthalmia: blindness--& we 
have jettisoned the blind to no avail. 
It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads. 
Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes 
& there is blindness in the fo'c'sle 
& we must sail 3 weeks before we come 
to port." 

What port awaits us, Davy Jones' or home? I've 
heard of slavers drifting, drifting, playthings of wind and storm and 
chance, their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling 
up on deck. 

Thou Who Walked On Galilee 

"Deponent further sayeth The Bella J 
left the Guinea Coast 
with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd 
for the barracoons of Florida: 

"That there was hardly room 'tween-decks for half 
the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there; 
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh 
and sucked the blood: 

"That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest 
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins; 
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose 
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: 

"That when the Bo's'n piped all hands, the flames 
spreading from starboard already were beyond 
control, the ******* howling and their chains 
entangled with the flames: 

"That the burning blacks could not be reached, 
that the Crew abandoned ship, 
leaving their shrieking negresses behind, 
that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches: 

"Further Deponent sayeth not." 

Pilot Oh Pilot Me 


II 

Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories, 
Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar; 
have watched the artful mongos baiting traps 
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished 

Were caught as prizes for our barracoons. 
Have seen the ****** kings whose vanity 
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah, 
Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us. 

And there was one--King Anthracite we named him-- 
fetish face beneath French parasols 
of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth 
whose cups were carven skulls of enemies: 

He'd honor us with drum and feast and conjo 
and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love, 
and for tin crowns that shone with paste, 
red calico and German-silver trinkets 

Would have the drums talk war and send 
his warriors to burn the sleeping villages 
and kill the sick and old and lead the young 
in coffles to our factories. 

Twenty years a trader, twenty years, 
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested 
from those black fields, and I'd be trading still 
but for the fevers melting down my bones. 


III 

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, 
the dark ships move, the dark ships move, 
their bright ironical names 
like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth; 
plough through thrashing glister toward 
fata morgana's lucent melting shore, 
weave toward New World littorals that are 
mirage and myth and actual shore. 

Voyage through death, 
voyage whose chartings are unlove. 

A charnel stench, effluvium of living death 
spreads outward from the hold, 
where the living and the dead, the horribly dying, 
lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement. 

Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, the corpse of mercy 
rots with him, rats eat love's rotten gelid eyes. But, oh, the 
living look at you with human eyes whose suffering accuses you, whose 
hatred reaches through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper's 
claw. You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks 
the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot 
kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will. 

"But for the storm that flung up barriers 
of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores, 
would have reached the port of Príncipe in two, 
three days at most; but for the storm we should 
have been prepared for what befell. 
Swift as a puma's leap it came. There was 
that interval of moonless calm filled only 
with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds, 
then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries 
and they had fallen on us with machete 
and marlinspike. It was as though the very 
air, the night itself were striking us. 
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm, 
we were no match for them. Our men went down 
before the murderous Africans. Our loyal 
Celestino ran from below with gun 
and lantern and I saw, before the cane- 
knife's wounding flash, Cinquez, 
that surly brute who calls himself a prince, 
directing, urging on the ghastly work. 
He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then 
he turned on me. The decks were slippery 
when daylight finally came. It sickens me 
to think of what I saw, of how these apes 
threw overboard the butchered bodies of 
our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam. 
Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told: 
Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us 
you see to steer the ship to Africa, 
and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea 
voyaged east by day and west by night, 
deceiving them, hoping for rescue, 
prisoners on our own vessel, till 
at length we drifted to the shores of this 
your land, America, where we were freed 
from our unspeakable misery. Now we 
demand, good sirs, the extradition of 
Cinquez and his accomplices to La 
Havana. And it distresses us to know 
there are so many here who seem inclined 
to justify the mutiny of these blacks. 
We find it paradoxical indeed 
that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty 
are rooted in the labor of your slaves 
should suffer the august John Quincey Adams 
to speak with so much passion of the right 
of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters 
and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero's 
garland for Cinquez. I tell you that 
we are determined to return to Cuba 
with our slaves and there see justice done. 
Cinquez-- 
or let us say 'the Prince'--Cinquez shall die." 

The deep immortal human wish, 
the timeless will: 

Cinquez its deathless primaveral image, 
life that transfigures many lives. 

Voyage through death 
to life upon these shores.

 Go hang yourself, you old M.D.! 
You shall not sneer at me. 
Pick up your hat and stethoscope, 
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap; 
I contemplate a joy exquisite 
I'm not paying you for your visit. 
I did not call you to be told 
My malady is a common cold. 

By pounding brow and swollen lip; 
By fever's hot and scaly grip; 
By those two red redundant eyes 
That weep like woeful April skies; 
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff; 
By handkerchief after handkerchief; 
This cold you wave away as naught 
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught! 

Give ear, you scientific fossil! 
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal; 
The Cold of which researchers dream, 
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme. 
This honored system humbly holds 
The Super-cold to end all colds; 
The Cold Crusading for Democracy; 
The Führer of the Streptococcracy. 

Bacilli swarm within my portals 
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals, 
But bred by scientists wise and hoary 
In some Olympic laboratory; 
Bacteria as large as mice, 
With feet of fire and heads of ice 
Who never interrupt for slumber 
Their stamping elephantine rumba. 

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth! 
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth; 
Don Juan was a budding gallant, 
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent; 
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish, 
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish. 
Oh what a derision history holds 
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

 Flesh is heretic.
My body is a witch.
I am burning it.

Yes I am torching
ber curves and paps and wiles.
They scorch in my self denials.

How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers

till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.

I vomited
her hungers.
Now the ***** is burning.

I am starved and curveless.
I am skin and bone.
She has learned her lesson.

Thin as a rib
I turn in sleep.
My dreams probe

a claustrophobia
a sensuous enclosure.
How warm it was and wide

once by a warm drum,
once by the song of his breath
and in his sleeping side.

Only a little more, 
only a few more days
sinless, foodless,

I will slip
back into him again
as if I had never been away.

Caged so
I will grow
angular and holy

past pain,
keeping his heart
such company

as will make me forget
in a small space
the fall

into forked dark,
into python needs
heaving to hips and breasts
and lips and heat
and sweat and fat and greed.

 1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; 
I withdraw from the still woods I loved; 
I will not go now on the pastures to walk; 
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; 
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground does not sicken? 
How can you be alive, you growths of spring? 
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? 
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you? 
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses? 
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations; 
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? 
I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I am deceiv’d; 
I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it
 up
 underneath;
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 

2
Behold this compost! behold it well! 
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—Yet behold! 
The grass of spring covers the prairies, 
The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, 
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, 
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, 
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, 
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs, 
The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the
 mare, 
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves, 
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk—the lilacs bloom in the door-yards; 
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry! 
That the winds are really not infectious, 
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after
 me, 
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, 
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever. 
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, 
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, 
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes,
 peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, 
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. 

3
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, 
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, 
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of
 diseas’d
 corpses, 
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, 
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

 You have the grit and the guts, I know; 
You are ready to answer blow for blow 
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, 
But your honor ends with your own back-yard; 
Each man intent on his private goal, 
You have no feeling for the whole; 
What singly none would tolerate 
You let unpunished hit the state, 
Unmindful that each man must share 
The stain he lets his country wear, 
And (what no traveller ignores) 
That her good name is often yours. 


You are proud in the pride that feels its might; 
From your imaginary height 
Men of another race or hue 
Are men of a lesser breed to you: 
The neighbor at your southern gate 
You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate. 
To lend a spice to your disrespect 
You call him the "greaser". But reflect! 
The greaser has spat on you more than once; 
He has handed you multiple affronts; 
He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; 
He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; 
He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag 
The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag; 
And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -- 
What did you do, what did you care? 
Did you find the season too cold and damp 
To change the counter for the camp? 
Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico? 
I can't imagine, but this I know -- 
You are impassioned vastly more 
By the news of the daily baseball score 
Than to hear that a dozen countrymen 
Have perished somewhere in Darien, 
That greasers have taken their innocent lives 
And robbed their holdings and raped their wives. 


Not by rough tongues and ready fists 
Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. 
The armies of a littler folk 
Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, 
Sobeit a nation that trains her sons 
To ride their horses and point their guns -- 
Sobeit a people that comprehends 
The limit where private pleasure ends 
And where their public dues begin, 
A people made strong by discipline 
Who are willing to give -- what you've no mind to -- 
And understand -- what you are blind to -- 
The things that the individual 
Must sacrifice for the good of all. 


You have a leader who knows -- the man 
Most fit to be called American, 
A prophet that once in generations 
Is given to point to erring nations 
Brighter ideals toward which to press 
And lead them out of the wilderness. 
Will you turn your back on him once again? 
Will you give the tiller once more to men 
Who have made your country the laughing-stock 
For the older peoples to scorn and mock, 
Who would make you servile, despised, and weak, 
A country that turns the other cheek, 
Who care not how bravely your flag may float, 
Who answer an insult with a note, 
Whose way is the easy way in all, 
And, seeing that polished arms appal 
Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, 
Would tell you menace does not exist? 
Are these, in the world's great parliament, 
The men you would choose to represent 
Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, 
And the virtues your fathers dignified? 
Oh, bury them deeper than the sea 
In universal obloquy; 
Forget the ground where they lie, or write 
For epitaph: "Too proud to fight." 


I have been too long from my country's shores 
To reckon what state of mind is yours, 
But as for myself I know right well 
I would go through fire and shot and shell 
And face new perils and make my bed 
In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led; 
But I have given my heart and hand 
To serve, in serving another land, 
Ideals kept bright that with you are dim; 
Here men can thrill to their country's hymn, 
For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise 
Is the same that fires the French these days, 
And, when the flag that they love goes by, 
With swelling bosom and moistened eye 
They can look, for they know that it floats there still 
By the might of their hands and the strength of their will, 
And through perils countless and trials unknown 
Its honor each man has made his own. 
They wanted the war no more than you, 
But they saw how the certain menace grew, 
And they gave two years of their youth or three 
The more to insure their liberty 
When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears 
Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers. 
They wanted the war no more than you, 
But when the dreadful summons blew 
And the time to settle the quarrel came 
They sprang to their guns, each man was game; 
And mark if they fight not to the last 
For their hearths, their altars, and their past: 
Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry 
For love of the country that WILL not die. 


O friends, in your fortunate present ease 
(Yet faced by the self-same facts as these), 
If you would see how a race can soar 
That has no love, but no fear, of war, 
How each can turn from his private role 
That all may act as a perfect whole, 
How men can live up to the place they claim 
And a nation, jealous of its good name, 
Be true to its proud inheritance, 
Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!

  Primitive
I ate my fill of a whale that died
 And stranded after a month at sea. . . .
There is a pain in my inside.
 Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
 Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith :
 Look how the Gods have afflicted me!


 Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
 Anything more than a harmless flea?. . .
The burning plague has taken my household.
 Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
 Though they were as good as good could be,
I will out and batter the family priest,
 Because my Gods have afflicted me!


 Medi/Eval

My privy and well drain into each other
 After the custom of Christendie. . . .
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
 So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
 Because the Lord has afflicted me.


 Material

I run eight hundred hens to the acre
 They die by dozens mysteriously. . . .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
 Not to mention the L. S. D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
 Because this God has afflicted me!


 Progressive

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
 Is homicidal lunacy. . . .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
 Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
 And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
 Because my God has afflicted me.


 Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:
 Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week. . .
 The bottom is out of the Universe!


 Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
 For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
 And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
 Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
 Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

 MY curse upon your venom’d stang,
That shoots my tortur’d gums alang,
An’ thro’ my lug gies mony a twang,
 Wi’ gnawing vengeance,
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
 Like racking engines!


When fevers burn, or argues freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or colics squeezes,
Our neibor’s sympathy can ease us,
 Wi’ pitying moan;
But thee—thou hell o’ a’ diseases—
 They mock our groan.


Adown my beard the slavers trickle
I throw the wee stools o’er the mickle,
While round the fire the giglets keckle,
 To see me loup,
While, raving mad, I wish a heckle
 Were in their doup!


In a’ the numerous human dools,
Ill hairsts, daft bargains, cutty stools,
Or worthy frien’s rak’d i’ the mools,—
 Sad sight to see!
The tricks o’ knaves, or fash o’fools,
 Thou bear’st the gree!


Where’er that place be priests ca’ hell,
Where a’ the tones o’ misery yell,
An’ ranked plagues their numbers tell,
 In dreadfu’ raw,
Thou, TOOTHACHE, surely bear’st the bell,
 Amang them a’!


O thou grim, mischief-making chiel,
That gars the notes o’ discord squeel,
Till daft mankind aft dance a reel
 In gore, a shoe-thick,
Gie a’ the faes o’ SCOTLAND’S weal
 A townmond’s toothache!

 From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill.
The sun and mood shed one white light.

From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting
Hand, the breaking of the hair,
From the first scent of the heart, the warning ghost,
And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh,
The sun was red, the moon was grey,
The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.

The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums,
The growing bones, the rumour of the manseed
Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart,
And the four winds, that had long blown as one,
Shone in my ears the light of sound,
Called in my eyes the sound of light.
And yellow was the multiplying sand,
Each golden grain spat life into its fellow,
Green was the singing house.

The plum my mother picked matured slowly,
The boy she dropped from darkness at her side
Into the sided lap of light grew strong,
Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh,
And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger,
Itched in the noise of wind and sun.

And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain,
To shade and knit anew the patch of words
Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre,
Need no word's warmth.
The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer,
That but a name, where maggots have their X.

I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
The code of night tapped on my tongue;
What had been one was many sounding minded.

One wound, one mind, spewed out the matter,
One breast gave suck the fever's issue;
From the divorcing sky I learnt the double,
The two-framed globe that spun into a score;
A million minds gave suck to such a bud
As forks my eye;
Youth did condense; the tears of spring
Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons;
One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.

 Hence Cupid! with your cheating toys, 
Your real griefs, and painted joys, 
Your pleasure which itself destroys. 
Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave, 
And only what will injure them do crave. 
Men's weakness makes love so severe, 
They give him power by their fear, 
And make the shackles which they wear. 
Who to another does his heart submit, 
Makes his own idol, and then worships it. 
Him whose heart is all his own, 
Peace and liberty does crown, 
He apprehends no killing frown. 
He feels no raptures which are joys diseased, 
And is not much transported, but still pleased.