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Famous Hardening Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...o sing or see
How fair thy faint wan face may be.

DECEMBER
December, thou whose hallowing hands
On shuddering seas and hardening lands
Set as a sacramental sign
The seal of Christmas felt on earth
As witness toward a new year's birth
Whose promise makes thy death divine,
The crowning joy that comes of thee
Makes glad all grief on land or sea....Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles



...ty of These States?
Have you too the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? 
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity; for the last-born? little and
 big?
 and for the errant? 

What is this you bring my America? 
Is it uniform with my country? 
Is it not something that has been better told or done before?
Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in some ship? 
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness? is the good old cause in it? 
Has it n...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...e weed-grown hedge,
The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing,
The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye.

A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye,
Shines into nothing the watcher's burnt-out candle,
Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense,
Faints in the outer silence the hunting-cry.

Love of its muted music breathes no sigh,
Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her spinning,
Toss on in vain the whispering trees of Eden,
Last of all last words spo...Read more of this...
by de la Mare, Walter
...h to plough 
The shrieking cross? 

A mute, nearly beautiful thing 
Is your face, that fills me with shame 
As I see it hardening, 
Warping the perfect image of God, 
And darkening my eternal fame....Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.
...er due, 
Their visages and stature as of gods; 
Their number last he sums. And now his heart 
Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength, 
Glories: for never, since created Man, 
Met such embodied force as, named with these, 
Could merit more than that small infantry 
Warred on by cranes--though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds 
In fable or roma...Read more of this...
by Milton, John



...1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow
And hardening Bones began 
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro' all the coasts; till weaken'd
The Senses inward rush'd shrinking,
Beneath the dark net of infection. 

2. Till the shrunken eyes clouded over
Discernd not the woven hipocrisy
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrowing perceptions
Appea...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How I was put on a platter and laid
between the mayonnaise and the bacon.
The rhythm of the refrigerator
had been disturbed.
The milk bottle hissed like a snake.
...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...the world with graver courage. 
But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin, 
And one that groweth deep into a life, 
With hardening roots that clutch about the breast. 
For this refuses faith in the unknown powers 
Within man's nature; shrewdly bringeth all 
Their inspiration of strange eagerness(
To a judgment bought by safe experience; 
Narrows desire into the scope of thought. 
But it is written in the heart of man, 
Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire. 
Thou must not th...Read more of this...
by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...rers,

Remember instead that weather’s for us

Who know too well its intentions, wind-keen,

Intense as the first frost hardening

Stubble grass to a tacky ice-blanket

Listen! In bed we hear the swollen trees totter,

Dropsical-limbed, murmuring outside the window

Like Catherine’s insistent ghost-voice

"Let me in, let me in!"...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, 
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch,
They Lion grow.

 Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones, 
"Come home, Come home!" From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the ...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry