Famous Quavering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Five Flights Up

...le dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions--if that is what they are--
answered directly, simply,
by day itself.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins...
The bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.

The little black dog runs in his yard.
His owner's voice arises,...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth


Hyperion

...eneath, he stampt his foot,
And from the basements deep to the high towers
Jarr'd his own golden region; and before
The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd,
His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,
To this result: "O dreams of day and night!
O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
O lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Liberty

...ous spirit, and a yell of hate
The voice of Hell might tremble to translate:
When the fond mother's tender lullaby
Went quavering in shrieks all suddenly,
And baby-lips were dabbled with the stain
Of crimson at the bosom of the slain,
And peaceful homes and fortunes ruined--lost
In smoldering embers of the holocaust.
Yet on and on, through years of gloom and strife,
Our country struggled into stronger life;
Till colonies, like footprints in the sand,
Marked Freedom's pathway ...Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb

Lines to a Don

...Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men--
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don bruti...Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire

Perhaps, when my last day comes

...Perhaps, when my last day comes, perhaps, if only for a moment, a frail and quavering sun will stoop down at my window.
My hands then, my poor faded hands, will even so be gilded once again by his glory; he will touch my mouth and my forehead a last time with his slow, bright, deep kiss; and the pale, but still proud flowers of my eyes will return his light before they close.
Sun, have I not worshipped your strength and your brigh...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile


Peter Quince At The Clavier

...ions. 
27 She felt, among the leaves, 
28 The dew 
29 Of old devotions. 

30 She walked upon the grass, 
31 Still quavering. 
32 The winds were like her maids, 
33 On timid feet, 
34 Fetching her woven scarves, 
35 Yet wavering. 

36 A breath upon her hand 
37 Muted the night. 
38 She turned -- 
39 A cymbal crashed, 
40 Amid roaring horns. 

III 

41 Soon, with a noise like tambourines, 
42 Came her attendant Byzantines. 

43 They wondered why Susanna c...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

The Cremona Violin

...es and horns in the lamplit grounds.
Pressed against him in the mazy wavering
Of a country dance, with her short breath quavering
She leans upon the beating, throbbing
Music. Laughing, sobbing,
Feet gliding after sliding feet;
His -- hers --
The ballroom blurs --
She feels the air
Lifting her hair,
And the lapping of water on the stone stair.
He is there! He is there!
Twang harps, and squeal, you thin violins,
That the dancers may dance, and never discover
The old stone stair...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Cross-Roads

...out like smoke,
his head ripples in the gale. Under the sign-post, in 
the pouring rain,
he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down
the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it. It 
flickers
among the trees. He licks out and winds about them. Over, 
under,
blown, contorted. Spindrift after spindrift; smoke following 
smoke.
There is a wailing through the trees, a wailing of fear,
and after it laughter -- laughter -- laughter, skirling up to the 
blac...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Dark House

...
Nor shake and scatter the dew from the boughs 
With shy and startled wing. 
But when that lover had passed the gate 
A quavering thrush began... 
‘Come back; come back!’ he shrilled to the heart 
Of the passion-plighted man....Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...night,
Slides down the knotted sheet, swings over the wall,
To fall to the street with a cat-like fall,
Slinks round a quavering rim of windy light,
And at last is gone,
Leaving his empty cell for the pallor of dawn . . .

The mother whose child was buried to-day
Turns her face to the window; her face is grey;
And all her body is cold with the coldness of rain.
He would have grown as easily as a tree,
He would have spread a pleasure of shade above her,
He would have been his...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 07: Midnight; bells toll and along the cloud-high towers

...night,
Slides down the knotted sheet, swings over the wall,
To fall to the street with a cat-like fall,
Slinks round a quavering rim of windy light,
And at last is gone,
Leaving his empty cell for the pallor of dawn . . .

The mother whose child was buried to-day
Turns her face to the window; her face is grey;
And all her body is cold with the coldness of rain.
He would have grown as easily as a tree,
He would have spread a pleasure of shade above her,
He would have been his...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Millers Tale

...by brocage*, *by presents and by agents*
And swore he woulde be her owen page.
He singeth brokking* as a nightingale. *quavering
He sent her piment , mead, and spiced ale,
And wafers* piping hot out of the glede**: *cakes **coals
And, for she was of town, he proffer'd meed.
For some folk will be wonnen for richess,
And some for strokes, and some with gentiless.
Sometimes, to show his lightness and mast'ry,
He playeth Herod  on a scaffold high.
But what availeth h...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Organ-Blower

...yes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.

O brother with the supple spine,
How much we o...Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell

The Quality of Courage

...Black trees against an orange sky, 
Trees that the wind shook terribly, 
Like a harsh spume along the road, 
Quavering up like withered arms, 
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms 
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below 
The iron ice stung like a goad, 
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet, 
And all the air was bitter sleet. 

And all the land was cramped with snow, 
Steel-strong and fierce and glimmering wan, 
Like pale plains of obsidian. 
-- And yet I strove -- ...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

Thrushes

...Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; 
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; 
Who hears the cry of God in everything, 
And storms the gate of nothingness for proof....Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried

Tinuviel

...
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-leaves,
And one by one with sighing sound,
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She dan...Read more of this...
by Tolkien, J R R

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