Famous Harder Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Cloud in Trousers

...led myself on the cross. 
Nothing is left to forgive. 
I¡¯ve cauterised the souls where tenderness was bred. 
It was harder than taking 
a thousand thousand Bastilles! 

And when, 
the rebellion 
his advent announcing, 
you step to meet the saviour ¨C 
then I 
shall root up my soul; 
I¡¯ll trample it hard 
till it spread 
in blood; and I offer you this as a banner. ...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir


A Man

...ou fucked Walter!" 
"So what the hell?" 
"So pull your dress up higher!" 
"No!" 
"Do what I say!" George slapped again, harder. Constance hiked her skirt. 
"Just up to the panties!" shouted George. "I don't quite want to see the
panties!" 
"Christ, george, what's gone wrong with you?" 
"You fucked Walter!" 
"George, I swear, you've gone crazy. I want to leave. Let me out of here,
George!"
"Don't move or I'll kill you!" 
"You'd kill me?" 
"I swear it!" George got up and poured...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Absalom And Achitophel

...avid's government:
Impoverish'd and depriv'd of all command,
Their taxes doubled as they lost their land;
And, what was harder yet to flesh and blood,
Their gods disgrac'd, and burnt like common wood.
This set the heathen priesthood in a flame;
For priests of all religions are the same:
Of whatsoe'er descent their godhead be,
Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,
In his defence his servants are as bold,
As if he had been born of beaten gold.
The Jewish Rabbins though their ...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

Astrophel and Stella

...t of knowledge plies;
Others, because the prince my seruice tries,
Thinke that I think State errours to redress:
But harder iudges iudge ambitions rage:
Scourge of itselfe, still climbing slipperie place:
Holds my young brain captiu'd in golden cage.
O fooles, or ouer-wise. alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start
But only Stellaes eyes and Stellaes heart. 
XXIV 

Rich fooles there be whose base and filthy heart
Lies hatching still the goods w...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip

Beowulf (Modern English)

...Never have I learned under the vault of heaven
of a more difficult contest in the night,
nor in the sea-streams a man harder beset.
Yet I survived the clutch of foes, escaped with my life,
weary with swimming. Then the sea carried me,
the flood according to the tides onto Finnish territory,
the welling waves. I haven’t heard a peep
spoken about you, about such terrible battles,
the terror of blades. Neither Brecca nor you
ever performed much of note in the dance of b...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Beowulf (Old English)

...e doughty be!
And so it came that I killed with my sword
nine of the nicors. Of night-fought battles
ne’er heard I a harder ’neath heaven’s dome,
nor adrift on the deep a more desolate man!
Yet I came unharmed from that hostile clutch,
though spent with swimming. The sea upbore me,
flood of the tide, on Finnish land,
the welling waters. No wise of thee
have I heard men tell such terror of falchions,
bitter battle. Breca ne’er yet,
not one of you pair, in the play o...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Child of Europe

...e his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of ...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw

Custer

...ross the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.



XXVIII.
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed, 
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears, 
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.



XXIX.
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains, 
Save the sad miséréré...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Essay on Man

...resumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, 
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind! 
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, 
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less! 
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made 
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? 
Or ask of yonder argent fields(5) above, 
Why JOVE'S Satellites are less than JOVE?(6) 
Of Systems possible, if 'tis confest 
That Wisdom infinite must form the best, 
Where all must full or not coheren...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Inferno (English)

...rn ye at the Will that, once defied, 
 Here cast ye grovelling? Have ye felt from Him 
 Aught ever for fresh revolt but harder pains? 
 Has Cerberus' throat, skinned with the threefold chains, 
 No meaning? Why, to fate most impotent, 
 Contend ye vainly?" 
 Then he turned and went, 
 Nor one glance gave us, but he seemed as one 
 Whom larger issue than the instant done 
 Engages wholly. 
 By that Power compelled, 
 The gates stood open, and our course we held 
 Unhindered. A...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Lara

...em to the neighbouring state 
An exile's sorrows, or an outlaw's hate: 
Hard is the task their fatherland to quit, 
But harder still to perish or submit. 

XII. 

It is resolved — they march — consenting Night 
Guides with her star their dim and torchless flight; 
Already they perceive its tranquil beam 
Sleep on the surface of the barrier stream; 
Already they descry — Is yon the bank? 
Away! 'tis lined with many a hostile rank. 
Return or fly! — What glitters in the rear? 
...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Last Instructions to a Painter

...aying, shows 
St Dunstan in it, tweaking Satan's nose. 
See sudden chance of war! To paint or write 
Is longer work and harder than to fight. 
At the first charge the enemy give out, 
And the Excise receives a total rout. 

Broken in courage, yet the men the same 
Resolve henceforth upon their other game: 
Where force had failed, with stratagem to play, 
And what haste lost, recover by delay. 
St Albans straight is sent to, to forbear, 
Lest the sure peace, forsooth, too soon...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

New Hampshire

...other thing?
No wonder poets sometimes have to seem
So much more businesslike than businessmen.
Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

She's one of the two best states in the Union.
Vermont's the other. And the two have been
Yokefellows in the sap yoke from of old
In many Marches. And they lie like wedges,
Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,
And are a figure of the way the strong
Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,
One thick where one is thin a...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Paradise Lost: Book 02

...fire, 
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock 
Of fighting elements, on all sides round 
Environed, wins his way; harder beset 
And more endangered than when Argo passed 
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks, 
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned 
Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool steered. 
So he with difficulty and labour hard 
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he; 
But, he once passed, soon after, when Man fell, 
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amai...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Samson Agonistes

...trength, comliness of shape, or amplest merit
That womans love can win or long inherit;
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit,
(Which way soever men refer it)
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
Or seven, though one should musing sit;
If any of these or all, the Timnian bride
Had not so soon preferr'd
Thy Paranymph, worthless to thee compar'd, 
Successour in thy bed,
Nor both so loosly disally'd
Thir nuptials, nor this last so trecherously
Had shorn the fatal har...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Four Winds

...rough the door-way, 
Stamped upon the crusted snow-drifts, 
Stamped upon the lakes and rivers, 
Made the snow upon them harder, 
Made the ice upon them thicker, 
Challenged Shingebis, the diver, 
To come forth and wrestle with him, 
To come forth and wrestle naked 
On the frozen fens and moorlands.
Forth went Shingebis, the diver, 
Wrestled all night with the North-Wind, 
Wrestled naked on the moorlands 
With the fierce Kabibonokka,
Till his panting breath grew fainter, 
Till...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

The Lady of the Lake

...llen Douglas more;
     But he who stems a stream with sand,
     And fetters flame with flaxen band,
     Has yet a harder task to prove,—
     By firm resolve to conquer love!
     Eve finds the Chief, like restless ghost,
     Still hovering near his treasure lost;
     For though his haughty heart deny
     A parting meeting to his eye
     Still fondly strains his anxious ear
     The accents of her voice to hear,
     And inly did he curse the breeze
     Th...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Three Voices

...-
Is capable of ANY crimes!" 

He felt it was his turn to speak,
And, with a shamed and crimson cheek,
Moaned "This is harder than Bezique!" 

But when she asked him "Wherefore so?"
He felt his very whiskers glow,
And frankly owned "I do not know." 

While, like broad waves of golden grain,
Or sunlit hues on cloistered pane,
His colour came and went again. 

Pitying his obvious distress,
Yet with a tinge of bitterness,
She said "The More exceeds the Less." 

"A truth of such...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Triumph Of Death

...brought;Now am I come to you, while yet your stateIs happy, ere you feel a harder fate.""On these you have no power," she then replied,(Who had more worth than all the world beside,)"And little over me; but there is oneWho will be deeply grieved when I am gone,His happiness doth on my life depend,I sha...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

White Flock

...
She sat down, like ceramic idol
In a long-ago-chosen pose.

To be happy -- is well-accustomed,
But attentive -- is harder just might.
Or the dark shadow has been overpowered
After many a jasmine March night?

Tiring din of the conversations,
Yellow chandelier's lifeless light
And the glimmer of crafty gadgets
Underneath the arm raised and light.

My companion looks at her with hope
And to her flashes a smile..
O my happy and wealthy heir,
Read from my will.
...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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