Famous Thrill Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Magdalen

by Amy Levy
 All things I can endure, save one. 
The bare, blank room where is no sun;
The parcelled hours; the pallet hard;
The dreary faces here within;
The outer women's cold regard;
The Pastor's iterated "sin";--
These things could I endure, and count
No overstrain'd, unjust amount;
No undue payment for such bliss--
Yea, all things bear, save only this:
That you, who knew what thing would be,
Have wrought...Read more of this...

The Dance At The Phoenix

by Thomas Hardy
 To Jenny came a gentle youth 
 From inland leazes lone; 
His love was fresh as apple-blooth 
 By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone. 
And duly he entreated her 
To be his tender minister, 
 And call him aye her own. 

Fair Jenny's life had hardly been 
 A life of modesty; 
At Casterbridge experience keen 
 Of many loves...Read more of this...

Honours Martyr

by Emily Brontë
 The moon is full this winter night;
The stars are clear, though few;
And every window glistens bright,
With leaves of frozen dew. 

The sweet moon through your lattice gleams
And lights your room like day;
And there you pass, in happy dreams,
The peaceful hours away! 

While I, with effort hardly quelling
The anguish in my breast,
Wander about the silent dwelling,
And cannot think of rest....Read more of this...

Nature And Art

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The young queen Nature, ever sweet and fair,
Once on a time fell upon evil days.
From hearing oft herself discussed with praise,
There grew within her heart the longing rare
To see herself; and every passing air
The warm desire fanned into lusty blaze.
Full oft she sought this end by devious ways,
But sought in vain, so fell she in despair.
For none within her train...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXXII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXII. Dolci ire, dolci sdegni e dolci paci. HE CONSOLES HIMSELF WITH THE THOUGHT THAT HE WILL BE ENVIED BY POSTERITY.  Sweet scorn, sweet anger, and sweet misery,Forgiveness sweet, sweet burden, and sweet ill;Sweet accents that mine ear so sweetly thrill,That sweetly bland, now sweetly fierce can be.[Pg...Read more of this...

The Aisne

by Alan Seeger
 We first saw fire on the tragic slopes 
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, 
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, 
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. 


The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, 
What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, 
In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, 
Winter came down on us, but no...Read more of this...

The Master of the Dance

by Vachel Lindsay
 A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher.


I

A master deep-eyed
Ere his manhood was ripe,
He sang like a thrush,
He could play any pipe.
So dull in the school
That he scarcely could spell,
He read but a bit,
And he figured not well.
A bare-footed fool,
Shod only with grace;
Long hair streaming down
Round a...Read more of this...

Panthea

by Oscar Wilde
 Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight, -
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse...Read more of this...

Twilight by the Cabin

by George William Russell
 DUSK, a pearl-grey river, o’er
 Hill and vale puts out the day—
What do you wonder at, asthore,
 What’s away in yonder grey?


Dark the eyes that linger long—
 Dream-fed heart, awake, come in,
Warm the hearth and gay the song:
 Love with tender words would win.


Fades the eve in dreamy fire,
 But the heart of night is lit:
Ancient beauty, old desire,
...Read more of this...

My Last Will

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 When I am safely laid away, 
Out of work and out of play, 
Sheltered by the kindly ground 
From the world of sight and sound, 
One or two of those I leave 
Will remember me and grieve, 
Thinking how I made them gay 
By the things I used to say; 
-- But the crown of their distress 
Will be...Read more of this...

How Good Are The Poor

by Victor Hugo
 ("Il est nuit. La cabane est pauvre.") 
 
 {Bk. LII. iii.} 
 
 'Tis night—within the close stout cabin door, 
 The room is wrapped in shade save where there fall 
 Some twilight rays that creep along the floor, 
 And show the fisher's nets upon the wall. 
 
 In the dim corner, from the oaken...Read more of this...

I Do Not Fear To Own Me Kin

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I DO not fear to own me kin
To the glad clods in which spring flowers begin;
Or to my brothers, the great trees,
That speak with pleasant voices in the breeze,
Loud talkers with the winds that pass;
Or to my sister, the deep grass.

Of such I am, of such my body is,
That thrills to reach its lips to kiss.
That gives and takes...Read more of this...

Wallflower

by Robert William Service
 Till midnight her needle she plied
To finish her pretty pink dress;
"Oh, bless you, my darling," she sighed;
"I hope you will be a success."
As she entered the Oddfellow's Hall
With the shy thrill of maiden romance
She felt like the belle of the Ball,
But . . . nobody asked her to dance.

Her programme was clutched in her hand;
Her smile was a tiny...Read more of this...

Palm Trees by the Sea

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Second Song: The Girl from Baltistan

                            Throb, throb, throb,
   Far away in the blue transparent Night,
   On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
  ...Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

To a soubrette

by Eugene Field
 'Tis years, soubrette, since last we met;
And yet--ah, yet, how swift and tender
My thoughts go back in time's dull track
To you, sweet pink of female gender!
I shall not say--though others may--
That time all human joy enhances;
But the same old thrill comes to me still
With memories of your songs and dances.

Soubrettish ways these latter days
Invite my praise, but never get...Read more of this...

The Thrill came slowly like a Boom for

by Emily Dickinson
 The Thrill came slowly like a Boom for
Centuries delayed
Its fitness growing like the Flood
In sumptuous solitude --
The desolations only missed
While Rapture changed its Dress
And stood amazed before the Change
In ravished Holiness --...Read more of this...

Joseph Dixon

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?
I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos
Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,
Making them sweet again -- with tuning fork or without?
Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say,
But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings
To a...Read more of this...

Penalty

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Because of the fullness of what I had, 
All that I have seems poor and vain. 
If I had not been happy, I were not sad-- 
Tho' my salt is savorless, why complain?

From the ripe perfection of what was mine, 
All that is mine seems worse than naught; 
Yet I know, as I sit in the dark and pine,...Read more of this...

Christmas In The Heart

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The snow lies deep upon the ground,
And winter's brightness all around
Decks bravely out the forest sere,
With jewels of the brave old year.
The coasting crowd upon the hill
With some new spirit seems to thrill;
And all the temple bells achime.
Ring out the glee of Christmas time.
In happy homes the brown oak-bough
Vies with the red-gemmed holly now;
And here and there, like pearls, there...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

The Violet Pressed in a Copy of Shakespeare

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 Here in the inmost of the master's heart
This violet crisp with early dew
Has come to leave her beauty and to part
With all her vivid hue.

And while in hollow glades and dells of musk,
Her fellows will reflower in bands,
Clasping the deeps of shade and emerald dusk,
With sweet inviolate hands,

She will lie here, a ghost of their delight,
Their lucent stems all...Read more of this...

The Logger

by Robert William Service
 In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight,
 I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer;
Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,
 And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.
The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed,
 And I alone a weary vigil keep;
In the sightless, sullen sky I can...Read more of this...

Did Not

by Thomas Moore
 'Twas a new feeling - something more
Than we had dared to own before,
Which then we hid not;
We saw it in each other's eye,
And wished, in every half-breathed sigh,
To speak, but did not.

She felt my lips' impassioned touch - 
'Twas the first time I dared so much,
And yet she chid not;
But whispered o'er my burning brow,
'Oh, do you doubt I...Read more of this...

A Lovers Quarrel

by Robert Browning
 I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit's cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love...Read more of this...

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