Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Shrivel Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Sandburg, Carl
...whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones … and
the woman who sold to many men and saw her breasts shrivel … in two poems you
pour these like a cup of coffee, Francois. 

The woman whose lips are a thread of scarlet, the woman whose feet take hold on
hell, the woman who turned to a memorial of salt looking at the lights of a
forgotten city … in your affidavits, ancient Jews, you pour these like cups of
coffee. 

The woman who took men as snakes ta...Read more of this...



by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...e comes an hour from Jove
Which his ruthless will defies,
And the dogs of Fate unties.
Shiver the palaces of glass,
Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls
Where in bright art each god and sibyl dwelt
Secure as in the Zodiack's belt;
And the galleries and halls
Wherein every Siren sung,
Like a meteor pass.
For this fortune wanted root
In the core of God's abysm,
Was a weed of self and schism:
And ever the Dæmonic Love
Is the ancestor of wars,
And the parent of remorse....Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...Her brown falcon perches above the sink
as steaming water forks over my hands.
Below the wrists they shrivel and turn pink.
I am in exile in my own land.

Her half-grown cats scuffle across the floor
trailing a slime of blood from where they fed.
I lock the door. They claw under the door.
I am an exile in my own bed.

Her spotted mongrel, bristling with red mange,
sleeps on the threshold of the Third Street bar
where I drink brandy a...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ing.
In the intimate dark there's never an ear,
Though the tulips stand on tiptoe to hear,
So give; ripe fruit must shrivel or fall.
As you are mine, Sweetheart, give all!
Starfire sparkles, your coronal....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...purple umbrella. The 
rose in his hand
shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then 
they collapse
and shrivel like red embers. The fire sizzles.

Tommy is galloping his cavalry, two by two, over the floor. They 
must pass
the open terror of the door and gain the enemy encamped under the 
wash-stand.
The mounted band is very grand, playing allegro and leading the 
infantry on
at the double quick. The tassel of the hearth-rug has 
flung dow...Read more of this...



by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...ur and drivel; 
Only the past is assured. From the observation car 
I stand looking back and watching the landscape shrivel, 
Wondering where we are going and just where the hell we are, 

Remembering how I planned to break the journey, to drive 
My own car one day, to have choice in my hands and my foot upon power, 
To see through the trumpet throat of vertiginous perspective 
My urgent Now explode continually into flower, 

To be the Eater of Time, a poet and not that s...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Edward
...ther from the door-side bush
Whenever she goes in or out of the house.
Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling
The shreds at last on to the path, 
Thinking perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs
Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still
But half as tall as she, though it is not old; 
So well she clips it. Not a word she says; 
And I ca only wonder how much hereafter
She will remember, with that bitter scent, 
Of garden rows, and ancient damson tree...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ay 
Than growing old alone among the ghosts. 

But we may still be glad that we were wrong: 
He fooled us, and we’d shrivel to deny it; 
Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long, 
I wish the bells in Boris would be quiet....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ke
At venture, stumble forward, make your mark,
(It's chalk on granite), then thank God no flame
Leaps from the rock to shrivel mark and man.
I'm clear -- my mark is made. Three months of drought
Had ruined much. It rained and washed away
The specks that might have gathered on my Name.
I took a country twice the size of France,
And shuttered up one doorway in the North.
I stand by those. You'll find that both will pay,
I pledged my Name on both -- they...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...—how breathe a single breath—how speak—if, out of myself,
I could not launch, to those, superior universes? 

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, 
But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual Me, 
And lo! thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
And fillest, swellest full, the vastnesses of Space. 

Greater than stars or suns, 
Bounding, O soul, thou journeyest forth; ...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...aring 
rainbows or rain, 
the forgiving air 
and the high fog gone; 
the owls will move on 
and the several 
waterfalls shrivel 
in the steady sun....Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
..., black, but lo! the lilies grow,
And yon-side where was woe, was woe,
-- Where the rabble of souls,' cried Sense,
`Did shrivel and turn and beg and burn,
Thrust back in the brimstone from above --
Is banked of violet, rose, and fern:'
`How?' quoth Love:

"`For lakes of pain, yon pleasant plain
Of woods and grass and yellow grain
Doth ravish the soul and sense:
And never a sigh beneath the sky,
And folk that smile and gaze above --'
`But saw'st thou here, with thine own eye,
...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...must hasten on,

And the young must 'neath my vengeance sink,

"Beauteous youth! no longer mayst thou live;

Here must shrivel up thy form so fair;
Did not I to thee a token give,

Taking in return this lock of hair?

View it to thy sorrow!

Grey thoult be to-morrow,

Only to grow brown again when there.

"Mother, to this final prayer give ear!

Let a funeral pile be straightway dress'd;
Open then my cell so sad and drear,

That the flames may give the lovers rest!

When...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...r colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,
Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel
And won't allow the hoof to shrivel.
Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
But the sand---they pinch and pound it like otters;
Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised bla...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...l was the apparelled thought,
 Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance --

Seese, on the threshold of his days,
 The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to unheralded dismays
 Submits his body and his soul;

The fatted shows wherein he stood
 Foregoing, and the idiot pride,
That he may prove with his own blood
 All that his easy sires denied --

Ultimate issues, primal springs,
 Demands, abasements, penalties --
The imperishable plinth of things
 Seen and unseen, that touch our pea...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shrivel poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things