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Famous Shrieks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilde, Oscar
...ver, and the wave
Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune,
The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave
The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass,
And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky
grass.

Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy,
For in yon stream there is a little reed
That often whispers how a lovely boy
Lay with her once upon a grassy mead,
Who when his cruel pleasure he had done
Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft i...Read more of this...



by Silverstein, Shel
...ey laughed until they shook the trees
With "Hah-Hah-Hahs" and "Hee-Hee-Hees."
They laughed with howls and yowls and shrieks,
They laughed all day, they laughed all week,
They laughed until they had a fit,
They laughed until their jackets split.
The laughter spread for miles around
To every city, every town,
Over mountains, 'cross the sea,
From Saint Tropez to Mun San Nee.
And soon the whole world rang with laughter,
Lasting till forever after,
While Cloony stood i...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...towers smothering o'er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks--all dimly fades
Into some backward corner of the brain;
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds
Along the pebbled shore of memory!
Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be
Upon thy v...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...against their eyes the sooty oil.
Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil,
Increasing gradual to a tempest rage,
Shrieks, yells, and groans of torture-pilgrimage;
Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat
And puff from the tail's end to stifled throat:
Then was appalling silence: then a sight
More wildering than all that hoarse affright;
For the whole herd, as by a whirlwind writhen,
Went through the dismal air like one huge Python
Antagonizing Boreas,--and so vanish'd....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...on Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse 
 & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments 
 of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the 
 fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis- 
 ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the 
 drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, 
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap- 
 pened and walked away unknown and forgotten 
 into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley 
 ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 
who sa...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...g spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battleaxes on shatter'd helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.


Last, as by some one...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...y rest allow, 
 Nor pause of such contending wraths as oft 
 Batter them against the precipitous sides, and there 
 The shrieks and moanings quench the screaming air, 
 The cries of their blaspheming. 
 These
 are they 
 That lust made sinful. As the starlings rise 
 At autumn, darkening all the colder skies, 
 In crowded troops their wings up-bear, so here 
 These evil-doers on each contending blast 
 Were lifted upward, whirled, and downward cast, 
 And swept around...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...nd 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 winding t...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...treaming eye !
The murmured plaint ! the deep heart-heaving sigh !
Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds ;
He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds !
Now the last laugh of agony is o'er,
And pale in blood he sleeps, to wake no more !

'T is done ! the flame of hate no longer burns :
Nature relents, but, ah! too late returns!
Why does my soul this gush of fondness feel ?
Trembling and faint, I drop the guilty steel !
Cold on my heart the hand of terror lies,
A...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
... 
Oh, winds of winter! List ye there 
To many a deep and dying groan; 
Or start, ye demons of the midnight air, 
At shrieks and thunders louder than your own. 
Alas! Even unhallowed breath 
May spare the victim fallen low; 
But man will ask no truce of death,- 
No bounds to human woe....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...range dream, she knew not why, to find
Their wildest wailings never out of tune
With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks
Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave
Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their eyes
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away
The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone,
To the waste deeps together. 

`Then I fixt
My wistful eyes on two fair images,
Both crown'd with stars and high amo...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...e gate, 
The Koran-chanters of the hymn of fate, 
The silent slaves with folded arms that wait, 
Sighs in the hall, and shrieks upon the gale, 
Tell him thy tale! 
Thou didst not view thy Selim fall! 
That fearful moment when he left the cave 
Thy heart grew chill: 
He was thy hope — thy joy — thy love — thine all — 
And that last thought on him thou couldst not save 
Sufficed to kill; 

Burst forth in one wild cry — and all was still. 
Peace to thy broken heart, and virg...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...for a child to behold;
A-glitter with lights of every hue,
Ruby and emerald, orange and blue,
And kiddies dancing, with shrieks of glee - 
One might fare worse than a Christmas tree.

"So they stood me up with a hundred more
In the blaze of a big department store;
But I thought of the forest dark and still,
And the dew and the snow and the heat and the chill,
And the soft chinook and the summer breeze,
And the dappled deer and the birds and the bees...
I was s...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...Boxing Day, 
And then surge up and gather shape, 
And spread great pinions and escape; 
And each great bird of clanging shrieks 
O Fire! Fire, from iron beaks. 
My shoulders cracked to send around 
Those shrieking birds made out of sound 
With news of fire in their bills. 
(They heard 'em plain beyond Wall Hills.). 

Up go the winders, out come heads, 
I heard the springs go creak in beds; 
But still I heave and sweat and tire, 
And still the clang goes "Fire,...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...d, wind . . . Wind in an enormous brain
Blowing dark thoughts like fallen leaves . . .
The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;
It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again;
And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams
And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.

One, whom the city imprisoned because of his cunning,
Who dreamed for years in a tower,
Seizes this hour
Of tumult and wind. He files through the rusted bar,
Leans his fa...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...velier tone,
     Expressed their merry marching on,
     Ere peal of closing battle rose,
     With mingled outcry, shrieks, and blows;
     And mimic din of stroke and ward,
     As broadsword upon target jarred;
     And groaning pause, ere yet again,
     Condensed, the battle yelled amain:
     The rapid charge, the rallying shout,
     Retreat borne headlong into rout,
     And bursts of triumph, to declare
     Clan-Alpine's congest—all were there.
     Nor...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...were telescopes 
For azure views; and there a group of girls 
In circle waited, whom the electric shock 
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake 
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied 
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls 
A dozen angry models jetted steam: 
A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon 
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves 
And dropt a fairy parachute and past: 
And there through twenty posts of telegraph 
They flashed a saucy message to...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ver!

Then flash'd the living Lightnings from her Eyes,
And Screams of Horror rend th' affrighted Skies.
Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,
When Husbands or when Lap-dogs breath their last,
Or when rich China Vessels, fal'n from high,
In glittring Dust and painted Fragments lie! 

Let Wreaths of Triumph now my Temples twine,
(The Victor cry'd) the glorious Prize is mine!
While Fish in Streams, or Birds delight in Air,
Or in a Coach and Six the British Fair,
As...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
..."What boots it? Shall his fevered eye
Through towering nothingness descry
The grisly phantom hurry by? 

"And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;
See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
And redden in the dusky glare? 

"The meadows breathing amber light,
The darkness toppling from the height,
The feathery train of granite Night? 

"Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
Through the thick curtain of his tears
Catch glimpses of his earlier years, 

"And hear the sounds he kne...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...w I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed: 'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.' And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it. Is it so difficult
For the spiri...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs