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Famous Hearken Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Gibran, Kahlil
...ple are unable to exile me from the domain of life for they know I will live in death. If they pluck my eyes I will hearken to the murmers of love and the songs of beauty.

If they close my ears I will enjoy the touch of the breeze mixed with the incebse of love and the fragrance of beauty.

If they place me in a vacuum, I will live together with my soul, the child of love and beauty.

I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today in my solitude ...Read more of this...



by Moody, William Vaughn
...

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, 
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; 
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose 
Go honking northward over Tennessee; 
West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, 
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, 
And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young, 
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, 
With restless violent hands and casual tongue 
Moulding her mighty fates, 
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; 
And l...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...h, you are nothing; you would be all, 
I would be merely much: you beat me there. 

No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why! 
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, 
Is--not to fancy what were fair in life 
Provided it could be,--but, finding first 
What may be, then find how to make it fair 
Up to our means: a very different thing! 
No abstract intellectual plan of life 
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws, 


But one, a man, who is man and nothing more...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ar some harmless villager
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
And hearken, if I may her business hear.

The LADY enters.

 LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
In wanton dance they ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...see the hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds--
In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx--do thou now,
By thy love's milky brow!
By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan!

 "O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles
Passion the...Read more of this...



by Shakespeare, William
...chase were in the skies.

"By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

"Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery i...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...rich thy wonders are, 
 Master and Author mine of Light and Song, 
 Befriend me now, who knew thy voice, that few 
 Yet hearken. All the name my work hath won 
 Is thine of right, from whom I learned. To thee, 
 Abashed, I grant it. . . Why the mounting sun 
 No more I seek, ye scarce should ask, who see 
 The beast that turned me, nor faint hope have I 
 To force that passage if thine aid deny." 
 He answered, "Would ye leave this wild and live, 
 Str...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...endless sins, our vain endeavour
For wasted days of youth to make atone
By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,
Hearken they now to either good or ill,
But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,
Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,
They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees
Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,
Mourning the old glad days before they knew
What evil things the heart of ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ose to assay 
If him by force he can destroy, or, worse, 
By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert; 
For man will hearken to his glozing lies, 
And easily transgress the sole command, 
Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall 
He and his faithless progeny: Whose fault? 
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me 
All he could have; I made him just and right, 
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 
Such I created all the ethereal Powers 
And Spirits, both th...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...hate the ev'ning mist,
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly
But cannot from a danger nigh.

What tho' the moon- the white moon
Shed all the splendour of her noon,
Her smile is chilly, and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest ...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...in her breast.

In her care to see that nought went wrong,

Now the mother happen'd to draw near;
At the door long hearkens she, full long,

Wond'ring at the sounds that greet her ear.

Tones of joy and sadness,

And love's blissful madness,

As of bride and bridegroom they appear,

From the door she will not now remove

'Till she gains full certainty of this;
And with anger hears she vows of love,

Soft caressing words of mutual bliss.

"Hush! the cock's loud st...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...e savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
 Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
 Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
 Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
 (You...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...And near the fiend he drew, *as nought ne were,* *as if nothing
Full privily, and rowned* in his ear: were the matter*
"Hearken, my brother, hearken, by thy faith, *whispered
Hearest thou not, how that the carter saith?
Hent* it anon, for he hath giv'n it thee, *seize
Both hay and cart, and eke his capels* three." *horses 
"Nay," quoth the devil, "God wot, never a deal,* whit
It is not his intent, trust thou me well;
Ask him thyself, if thou not trowest* me, *believes...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ranted him withoute more avise*, *consideration
And bade him say his verdict, as him lest.
Lordings (quoth he), now hearken for the best;
But take it not, I pray you, in disdain;
This is the point, to speak it plat* and plain. *flat
That each of you, to shorten with your way
In this voyage, shall tellen tales tway,
To Canterbury-ward, I mean it so,
And homeward he shall tellen other two,
Of aventures that whilom have befall.
And which of you that bear'th him best ...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...e
Which the Greek art has made divine in stone--
Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek,
Note every pang, and hearken every shriek,
Of some despairing lost Laocoon,
The human nature would thyself subdue
To share the human woe before thine eye--
Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true
To man's great sympathy.

But in the ideal realm, aloof and far,
Where the calm art's pure dwellers are,
Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan.
Here, no sharp grief...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...l day meeten men at *unset steven*. *unexpected time 
Full little wot Arcite of his fellaw,
That was so nigh to hearken of his saw*, *saying, speech
For in the bush he sitteth now full still.
When that Arcite had roamed all his fill,
And *sungen all the roundel* lustily, *sang the roundelay*
Into a study he fell suddenly,
As do those lovers in their *quainte gears*, *odd fashions*
Now in the crop*, and now down in the breres**,  *tree-top
Now up, now down,...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...
When that his tail shall *brennen in the glede*, *burn in the fire*
For he not help'd the needful in their need."

Hearken what is the sentence of the wise:
Better to die than to have indigence.
*Thy selve* neighebour will thee despise, *that same*
If thou be poor, farewell thy reverence.
Yet of the wise man take this sentence,
Alle the days of poore men be wick'*, *wicked, evil
Beware therefore ere thou come to that prick*. *point

If thou be poor, thy broth...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...o my way!"
Our Host answer'd; "*Tell on a devil way*; *devil take you!*
Thou art a fool; thy wit is overcome."
"Now hearken," quoth the Miller, "all and some:
But first I make a protestatioun.
That I am drunk, I know it by my soun':
And therefore if that I misspeak or say,
*Wite it* the ale of Southwark, I you pray: *blame it on*
For I will tell a legend and a life
Both of a carpenter and of his wife,
How that a clerk hath *set the wrighte's cap*." *fooled the ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...apart,
Fetter'd in hand, but join'd in heart,
'Twas still some solace, in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,
So song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took on a dreary tone,
And echo of the dungeon stone,
A grating sound, not full and free,
As they of yore were wont to be;
It might be fancy - but to me
They never sounded like our own....Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...he Cane* of Galilee, *Cana
That by that ilk* example taught he me, *same
That I not wedded shoulde be but once.
Lo, hearken eke a sharp word for the nonce,* *occasion
Beside a welle Jesus, God and man,
Spake in reproof of the Samaritan:
"Thou hast y-had five husbandes," said he;
"And thilke* man, that now hath wedded thee, *that
Is not thine husband:" 3 thus said he certain;
What that he meant thereby, I cannot sayn.
But that I aske, why the fifthe man
Was not husband...Read more of this...

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