Definition of "palsied"

Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him / Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim / Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XXVI

[“]You had another of your vacillating consultations with your councillors. Fine advisers.” With infinite scorn, “A herd of palsied purblind idiots hugging their sterile profits close to their sunken chests in the face of my father’s displeasure.”

1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), part V: “The Merchant Princes”, chapter 16, page 180, ¶ 9