Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Shrinks Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Betjeman, John
...he freshness of the spring
On sunny shallows, green and whispering.

The wideness which the lark-song gives the sky
Shrinks at the clang of sea-birds sailing by
Whose notes are tuned to days when seas are high.

From today's calm, the lane's enclosing green
Leads inland to a usual Cornish scene-
Slate cottages with sycamore between,

Small fields and tellymasts and wires and poles
With, as the everlasting ocean rolls,
Two chapels built for half a hundred souls....Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa,
So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil,
Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it.
But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly
Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight.
It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom.
Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her,
And every stroke...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...instant sympathy assents;
And I would judge all systems and all faiths
By that best touchstone, from whose test DECEIT
Shrinks like the Arch-Fiend at Ithuriel's spear,
And SOPHISTRY'S gay glittering bubble bursts,
As at the spousals of the Nereid's son,
When that false Florimel, by her prototype
Display'd in rivalry, with all her charms
Dissolved away.

Nor can the halls of Heaven
Give to the human soul such kindred joy,
As hovering o'er its earthly haunts it feels,
When...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...
The sickening iciness of that cold dew 
That rises as the busy bosom sinks 
With heavy thoughts from which reflection shrinks. 
Yes — there be things which we must dream and dare 
And execute ere thought be half aware: 
Whate'er might Kaled's be, it was enow 
To seal his lip, but agonise his brow. 
He gazed on Ezzelin till Lara cast 
That sidelong smile upon on the knight he pass'd; 
When Kaled saw that smile his visage fell, 
As if on something recognised right wel...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...ortal chocolate, 
What an account to Carteret, that, and more, 
A Parliament is to the Chancellor. 
So the Sad-tree shrinks from the morning's eye, 
But blooms all night and shoots its branches high. 
So, at the sun's recess, again returns 
The comet dread, and earth and heaven burns. 

Now Mordaunt may, within his castle tower, 
Imprison parents, and the child deflower. 
The Irish herd is now let loose and comes 
By millions over, not by hecatombs; 
And now, ...Read more of this...



by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...head, 
Or brightly paints the mossy ground; 
For ah! the beauteous bud, too soon, 
Scorch'd by the burning eye of day; 
Shrinks from the sultry glare of noon, 
Droops its enamell'd brow, and blushing, dies away....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...rth's vast space to sound the glories of thy name. 

ILLUSTRIOUS VALOUR ! from whose glance, 
Each recreant passion shrinks dismay'd; 
To whom benignant Heaven consign'd, 
All that can elevate the mind; 
'Tis THINE, in radiant worth array'd, 
To rear thy glitt'ring helmet high, 
And with intrepid front, defy 
Stern FATE's uplifted arm, and desolating lance, 
When, from the CHAOS of primeval Night, 
This wond'rous ORB first sprung to light; 
And pois'd amid the sphery clim...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...For still his Heart's inclos'd within a Golden Mine. 


Contention with its angry Brawls 
By Storms o'er-clamour'd, shrinks and falls; 
Nor WHIG, nor TORY now the rash Contender calls. 


Those, who but Vanity allow'd, 
Nor thought, it reach'd the Name of Sin, 
To be of their Perfections proud, 
Too much adorn'd without, or too much rais'd within, 
Now find, that even the lightest Things, 
As the minuter parts of Air, 
When Number to their Weight addition brings, 
Can...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...l.
Love to crown the silent feast he sought,

Ah! full love-sick was the stripling's soul.

From his prayer she shrinks,

Till at length he sinks

On the bed and weeps without control.

And she comes, and lays her near the boy:

"How I grieve to see thee sorrowing so!
If thou think'st to clasp my form with joy,

Thou must learn this secret sad to know;

Yes! the maid, whom thou

Call'st thy loved one now,

Is as cold as ice, though white as snow."

Then he cla...Read more of this...

by Lewis, C S
...There is a wildness still in England that will not feed 
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer's hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed 
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.

Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk 
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make -
We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke 
As Landor, su...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...s, "1 Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
"Crouch for employment."--Lo! the suffering world,
Torn by the fearful conflict, shrinks, amaz'd,
From Freedom's name, usurp'd and misapplied,
And, cow'ring to the purple Tyrant's rod,
Deems that the lesser ill--Deluded Men!
Ere ye prophane her ever-glorious name,
Or catalogue the thousands that have bled
Resisting her; or those, who greatly died
Martyrs to Liberty --revert awhile
To the black scroll, that tells of regal crimes
Committed...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r> Look you! the gray mare 
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills 
From tile to scullery, and her small goodman 
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell 
Mix with his hearth: but you--she's yet a colt-- 
Take, break her: strongly groomed and straitly curbed 
She might not rank with those detestable 
That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl 
Their rights and wrongs like potherbs in the street. 
They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance: 
~I~ li...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...freedom won. 

XVI. 

Still by the shore Alp mutely mused, 
And woo'd the freshness night diffused. 
There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea, [3] 
Which changeless rolls eternally; 
So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood, 
Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood; 
And the powerless moon beholds them flow, 
Heedless if she come or go: 
Calm or high, in main or bay, 
On their course she hath no sway. 
The rock unworn its base doth bare, 
A...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...And she, the unforgiving, hates him 
More for her lack than for her loss.

He feeds with pride his indecision, 
And shrinks from what wil not occur, 
Bequeathing with infirm derision 
His ashes to the days that were, 
Before she made him prisoner; 
And labors to retrieve the vision 
That he must once have had of her.

He waits, and there awaits an ending, 
And he knows neither what nor when; 
But no magicians are attending 
To make him see as he saw then, 
And he will...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...at nearest us? what wretch 
Is that with eyebrows white and slanting brow? 
Listen! him yonder who, bound down supine, 
Shrinks yelling from that sword there, engine-hung. 
He too amongst my ancestors! I hate 
The despot, but the dastard I despise. 
Was he our countryman?' 
'Alas, O king! 
Iberia bore him, but the breed accurst 
Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east.' 
'He was a warrior then, nor fear'd the gods?' 
'Gebir, he fear'd the demons, not the go...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...ery spate; 
Not to submit for ever, until 
The will of the country is one man's will, 
And every soul in the whole land shrinks 
From thinking—except as his neighbour thinks. 
Men who have governed England know 
That dreadful line that they may not pass 
And live. Elizabeth long ago 
Honoured and loved, and bold as brass, 
Daring and subtle, arrogant, clever, 
English, too, to her stiff backbone,
Somewhat a bully, like her own
Father— yet even Elizabeth never
Dared to...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...e, that Heaven-nursed Plant,
Which most our Earthly Gardens want.
A prickling leaf it bears, and such
As that which shrinks at ev'ry touch;
But Flow'rs eternal, and divine,
That in the Crowns of Saints do shine.

The sight does from these Bastions ply,
Th' invisible Artilery;
And at proud Cawood Castle seems
To point the Battery of its Beams.
As if it quarrell'd in the Seat
Th' Ambition of its Prelate great.
But ore the Meads below it plays,
Or innocently seem...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...ers
men in masks with arms show off their might.

The day's last images recede to first a glow
and then a ball that shrinks back to a blank screen.
Turning to love, and sleep's oblivion, I know
what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean.

Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood
may and apple petals, browned and creased,
fall onto the carpet and bring back the flood
of feelings their first falling had released.

I hear like ghosts from all Leeds matche...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...urder'd with the view,
Like stars asham'd of day, themselves withdrew;

Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain,
And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again;
So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled
Into the deep dark cabins of her head:

Where they resign their office and their light
To the disposing of her troubled brain;
Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
And never ...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...when. I remind him 
I'm an American, that all has yeses sound alike to me. 
I tell him here in America we have shrinks 
who can help him to be less of a people-pleaser. 
We have two-year-olds who love to scream "No!" 
when they don't get their way. I tell him, 
in America we have a popular book,
When I Say No I Feel Guilty.
"Should I get you a copy?" I ask.
He says yes, but I think he means
"If it will please you," i.e. "I won't read it."
...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shrinks poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things