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Famous Harrow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...words, like Highlan’ swords,
 Divide the joints an’ marrow;
His talk o’ Hell, whare devils dwell,
 Our vera “sauls does harrow”
 Wi’ fright that day!


A vast, unbottom’d, boundless pit,
 Fill’d fou o’ lowin brunstane,
Whase raging flame, an’ scorching heat,
 Wad melt the hardest whun-stane!
The half-asleep start up wi’ fear,
 An’ think they hear it roarin;
When presently it does appear,
 ’Twas but some neibor snorin
 Asleep that day.


’Twad be owre lang a tale to tell,
 How...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...e’d him,
 An’ try’t that night.


He marches thro’ amang the stacks,
 Tho’ he was something sturtin;
The graip he for a harrow taks,
 An’ haurls at his curpin:
And ev’ry now an’ then, he says,
 “Hemp-seed I saw thee,
An’ her that is to be my lass
 Come after me, an’ draw thee
 As fast this night.”


He wistl’d up Lord Lennox’ March
 To keep his courage cherry;
Altho’ his hair began to arch,
 He was sae fley’d an’ eerie:
Till presently he hears a squeak,
 An’ then a grane an’ ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert
...ight and the darkness of storm were as storm in the heart of Ind.
Such glory, such terror, such passion, as lighten and harrow the far fierce East,
Rang, shone, spake, shuddered around us: the night was an altar with death for priest.
The channel that sunders England from shores where never was man born free
Was clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and the wrath of a tropic sea.
As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from a backward ...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...ouse
About your ears, and lay upon
The year, your cares, that's fled and gone:
And let the russet swains the plough
And harrow hang up resting now;
And to the bag-pipe all address,
Till sleep takes place of weariness.
And thus throughout, with Christmas plays,
Frolic the full twelve holy-days....Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert
...o cares what they say? It's a nice way to live, 
Just taking what Nature is willing to give, 
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow." 
"I wish you had seen his perpetual bow-- 
And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned, 
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned." 
"I wish I knew half what the flock of them know 
Of where all the berries and other things grow, 
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top 
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will cr...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert



...pt the perils of the boundless deep,
An Outcast--unbeloved and unbewail'd.

Why stern Remembrance! must thine iron hand
Harrow my soul? why calls thy cruel power
The fields of England to my exil'd eyes,
The joys which once were mine? even now I see
The lowly lovely dwelling! even now
Behold the woodbine clasping its white walls
And hear the fearless red-breasts chirp around
To ask their morning meal:--for I was wont
With friendly band to give their morning meal,
Was wont to l...Read more of this...
by Southey, Robert
...more than that - a furlong on - why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Change...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...O Hunger, Hunger, I will harness thee
And make thee harrow all my spirit's glebe.
Of old the blind bard Herve sang so sweet
He made a wolf to plow his land....Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...ng again: 
 Twice no one dies. 

 Flower-petals flee; 
But, since it once hath been, 
No more that severing scene 
 Can harrow me. 

 Birds faint in dread: 
I shall not lose old strength 
In the lone frost's black length: 
 Strength long since fled! 

 Leaves freeze to dun; 
But friends can not turn cold 
This season as of old 
 For him with none. 

 Tempests may scath; 
But love can not make smart 
Again this year his heart 
 Who no heart hath. 

 Black is night's cope; 
But...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary's filling
With the sea.

Then Harrow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level of the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather for the plunging
Into caves

There's a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton,
There's a li...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...d I ask that,
I shall be old indeed.'
 Thereon the man
Went to the Sacred House and stood between
The golden plough and harrow and spoke aloud
That all attendants and the casual crowd might hear.
'God I have loved, but should I ask return
Of God or woman, the time were come to die.'
He bade, his hundred and first year at end,
Diggers and carpenters make grave and coffin;
Saw that the grave was deep, the coffin sound,
Summoned the generations of his house,
Lay in the coffin, s...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...annot bring again:
Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;
But since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost's black length:
Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends cannot turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.

Tempests may scath;
But love cannot make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.

Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal
O...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee sti...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...bing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kelsal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone....Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...Ye scenes of my childhood, whose lov'd recollection
Embitters the present, compar'd with the past;
Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection,
And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last;

Where fancy, yet, joys to retrace the resemblance
Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied;
How welcome to me your ne'er fading remembrance,
Whic...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where eath tooth-point goes.
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.


Pagett, M.P., was a liar, and a fluent liar therewith --
He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth";
Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November,
And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay till September.

...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...g down a leaf-lapped furrow
There's an old plough upside-down on a weedy ridge
And someone is shouldering home a saddle-harrow.
Out of that childhood country what fools climb
To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time?...Read more of this...
by Herbert, George
...rib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
“The shapes that are gone are here,” said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa.. . .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird’s nest.

Listen...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...apart, and there I am, on 
the curb across, gawking.

I never realized what brutal work it is, how matter-of-factly and harrow-
ingly dangerous.
The ladders flex and quiver, things skid from the edge, the materials are 
bulky and recalcitrant.
When the rusty, antique nails are levered out, their heads pull off; the 
underroofing crumbles.
Even the battered little furnace, roaring along as patient as a donkey, 
chokes and clogs,
a dense, malignant smoke shoots up, and someone ...Read more of this...
by Williams, C K
...Saviour Christ would sing aloud, 
And as I drove the clods apart 
Christ would be ploughing in my heart, 
Through rest-harrow and bitter roots, 
Through all my bad life's rotten fruits.

O Christ who holds the open gate, 
O Christ who drives the furrow straight, 
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter 
Of holy white birds flying after, 
Lo, all my heart's field red and torn, 
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn, 
The young green corn divinely springing, 
The young...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry