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Famous Shrew Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...For fifteen years our thoughts have run together, and our fine and serene ardour has vanquished habit, the dull-voiced shrew whose slow, rough hands wear out the most stubborn and the strongest love.
I look at you and I discover you each day, so intimate is your gentleness or your pride: time indeed obscures the eyes of your beauty, but it exalts your heart, whose golden depths peep open.
Artlessly, you allow yourself to be probed and known, and your soul always appears fr...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile



...' She thereat, as one 
That smells a foul-fleshed agaric in the holt, 
And deems it carrion of some woodland thing, 
Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender nose 
With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling, 'Hence! 
Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease. 
And look who comes behind,' for there was Kay. 
'Knowest thou not me? thy master? I am Kay. 
We lack thee by the hearth.' 

And Gareth to him, 
'Master no more! too well I know thee, ay-- 
The most ungentle...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed,...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...oweth
  The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply.
"If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth,
  And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the glead and pye."
And he stooped to whet his beak on the stones of the coping;
  And when once more the shout came, in querulous tones he spake,
"What I said was 'more's the pity;' if the heart be long past hoping,
  Let it say of death, 'I know it,' or doubt on and break.
"Men must die—on...Read more of this...
by Ingelow, Jean
...ockatoo
****, dog **** (past catalog or assimilation),
cricket ****, elk (high plains) ****, and

tiny scribbled little shrew ****, whale **** (what
a sight, deep assumption), mandril **** (blazing
blast off), weasel **** (wiles' waste), gazelle ****,

magpie **** (total protein), tiger **** (too acid
to contemplate), moral eel and manta ray ****, eerie
shark ****, earthworm **** (a soilure), crab ****,

wolf **** upon the germicidal ice, snake ****, giraffe
**** that acceler...Read more of this...
by Ammons, A R



...
who fought with what she partly understood.
Few men about her would or could do more,
hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore.

 8

"You all die at fifteen," said Diderot,
and turn part legend, part convention.
Still, eyes inaccurately dream
behind closed windows blankening with steam.
Deliciously, all that we might have been,
all that we were--fire, tears,
wit, taste, martyred ambition--
stirs like the memory of refused adultery
the drained and flagging...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne
...ere it not for
For of such japes* will I not be shrive.** *tricks **confessed
Stomach nor conscience know I none;
I shrew* these shrifte-fathers** every one. *curse **confessors
Well be we met, by God and by St Jame.
But, leve brother, tell me then thy name,"
Quoth this Sompnour. Right in this meane while
This yeoman gan a little for to smile.

"Brother," quoth he, "wilt thou that I thee tell?
I am a fiend, my dwelling is in hell,
And here I ride about my ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...le, and tarry not the time: **surgeon 
Lo here is Deptford, and 'tis half past prime:
Lo Greenwich, where many a shrew is in.
It were high time thy tale to begin."

"Now, sirs," quoth then this Osewold the Reeve,
I pray you all that none of you do grieve,
Though I answer, and somewhat set his hove*, *hood 
For lawful is *force off with force to shove.* *to repel force
This drunken miller hath y-told us here by force*
How that beguiled was a carpentere,
...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...thus he did do slay them alle three.

Irous Cambyses was eke dronkelew,* *a drunkard
And aye delighted him to be a shrew.* *vicious, ill-tempered
And so befell, a lord of his meinie,* *suite
That loved virtuous morality,
Said on a day betwixt them two right thus:
'A lord is lost, if he be vicious.
[An irous man is like a frantic beast,
In which there is of wisdom *none arrest*;] *no control*
And drunkenness is eke a foul record
Of any man, and namely* of a lord.<...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...is no sin;
Better is to be wedded than to brin.* *burn
What recketh* me though folk say villainy** *care **evil
Of shrewed* Lamech, and his bigamy? *impious, wicked
I wot well Abraham was a holy man,
And Jacob eke, as far as ev'r I can.* *know
And each of them had wives more than two;
And many another holy man also.
Where can ye see, *in any manner age,* *in any period*
That highe God defended* marriage *forbade 5
By word express? I pray you tell it me;
Or where ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...to lead or drive.
 Greet her--she's hailing a stranger!
 Meet her--she's busking to leave.
 Let her alone for a shrew to the bone,
 And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!
 Largesse! Largesse, Fortune!
 I'll neither follow nor flee.
 If I don't run after Fortune,
 Fortune must run after me!...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...ngfisher 
Flutters when noon-heats are near, 
Glad the shelving banks to shun, 
Red and steaming in the sun, 
Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat 
Burrows, and the speckled stoat; 
Where the quick sandpipers flit 
In and out the marl and grit 
That seems to breed them, brown as they: 
Naught disturbs its quiet way, 
Save some lazy stork that springs, 
Trailing it with legs and wings, 
Whom the shy fox from the hill 
Rouses, creep he ne'er so still....Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

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