Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Palpitate
Palpitating … like a white soul tossed out to eternity with thrills of time upon it.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Palpitating at the least emotion like the nostrils of an amorous tigress.
—Théphile Gautier
Like the birch-leaf palpitated.
—Henry W. Longfellow
Palpitant as men’s pulses palpitate
Between the flowing and ebbing tides of fate
That wash their lifelong waifs of weal and woe
Through night and light and twilight to and fro.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne