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Famous Hoar Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...ate’s roar,
 They, sightless, stand,
To mend the honest patriot-lore,
 And grace the hand.


“And when the bard, or hoary sage,
Charm or instruct the future age,
They bind the wild poetric rage
 In energy,
Or point the inconclusive page
 Full on the eye.


“Hence, Fullarton, the brave and young;
Hence, Dempster’s zeal-inspired tongue;
Hence, sweet, harmonious Beattie sung
 His ’Minstrel lays’;
Or tore, with noble ardour stung,
 The sceptic’s bays.


“To lower orde...Read more of this...



by Lawrence, D. H.
...The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun, 
The crisping steam of a train 
Melts in the air, while two black birds 
Sweep past the window again. 

Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait 
In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy 
To leap down at our gate. 

He has passed us by; but is it 
Relief that starts in my breast?
Or a deeper bruise of knowing t...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...dread!
And her locks cover'd with grey despair.

Prison'd on watery shore
Starry Jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar
Weeping o'er
I hear the father of the ancient men

Selfish father of men
Cruel jealous selfish fear
Can delight
Chain'd in night
The virgins of youth and morning bear.

Does spring hide its joy
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower?
Sow by night?
Or the ploughman in darkness plough?

Break this heavy chain.
That does freeze my bones around...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

 Upon the sides of...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ps; as when heav'd anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,
Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all hoar,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

 Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes
One moment with his hand among the sweets:
Onward he goes--he stops--his bosom beats
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...e visible above: the Seasons four,--
Green-kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store
In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar,
Join dance with shadowy Hours; while still the blast,
In swells unmitigated, still doth last
To sway their floating morris. "Whose is this?
Whose bugle?" he inquires: they smile--"O Dis!
Why is this mortal here? Dost thou not know
Its mistress' lips? Not thou?--'Tis Dian's: lo!
She rises crescented!" He looks, 'tis she,
His very goddess: good-bye e...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
Pierce into glades, cave...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman
Where is the thatch-roofed v...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...ering feet;

And on the pavement, spread before 
The long front of the mansion grey, 
Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar, 
Which pale on grass and granite lay.

Not long she stayed where misty moon 
And shimmering stars could on her look, 
But through the garden arch-way, soon 
Her strange and gloomy path she took.

Some firs, coeval with the tower, 
Their straight black boughs stretched o'er her head, 
Unseen, beneath this sable bower, 
Rustled her dress and rapi...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...I 
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
..., for a God;
And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O moments big as years!
All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,
And press it so upon our weary griefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.<...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...was in it, and tremulous shake,
As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung;
And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song,
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

XXXVII.
Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright
With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof
From the poor girl by magic of their light,
The while it did unthread the horrid woof
Of the late darken'd time,--the murderous spite
Of pride and avarice,--the dark pine roof
In the forest,--and the sodden...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...air felt cold
And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
That a hellish shape at midnight led 
The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
And sate on the seat beside him there,
Till a naked child came wandering by,
When the fiend would change to a lady fair!
A fearful tale! the truth was worse;
For here a sister and a brother
Had solemnized a monstrous curse,
Meeting in this fair solitude;
For beneath yon very sky,
Had they resigned to one another 
Body and soul. The multitude,...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...e and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
---And the whole is our Duke's country.

III.

I was born the day this present Duke was---
(And O, says the song, ere I was old!)
In the castle where the other Duke was---
(When I was happy and young, not old!)
I in the kennel, he in the bower:
We are of like age to an hour.
My father was huntsman in that day;
Who has...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...led,
     The fragments of an earlier world;
     A wildering forest feathered o'er
     His ruined sides and summit hoar,
     While on the north, through middle air,
     Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.
     XV.

     From the steep promontory gazed
     The stranger, raptured and amazed,
     And, 'What a scene were here,' he cried,
     'For princely pomp or churchman's pride!
     On this bold brow, a lordly tower;
     In that soft vale, a lady's bowe...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...st on the spangled vault
Raptured thou sitt'st, while murmurs indistinct
Of distant billows soothe thy pensive ear
With hoarse and hollow sounds; secure, self-blest,
There oft thou listen´st to the wild uproar
Of fleets encount´ring, that in whispers low
Ascends the rocky summit, where thou dwell´st
Remote from man, conversing with the spheres!
O, lead me, queen sublime, to solemn glooms
Congenial with my soul; to cheerless shades,
To ruin´d seats, to twilight cells and bower...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...ere did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside--

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charm'ed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue,...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...tioun
Of that I have received in your town:
And yet ne grieveth me nothing so sore,
As that the olde churl, with lockes hoar,
Blasphemed hath our holy convent eke."
"Now, master," quoth this lord, "I you beseek" --
"No master, Sir," quoth he, "but servitour,
Though I have had in schoole that honour. 
God liketh not, that men us Rabbi call
Neither in market, nor in your large hall."
*"No force,"* quoth he; "but tell me all your grief." *no matter*
Sir," quo...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...heir rage they tear
A subterranean portal for the river,
It fled. The circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.

And, when the Wizard Lady would ascend
The labyrinths of some many-winding vale
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend,
She called "Hermaphroditus!"--and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...of cloud and gleam,
Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave,
One like a prophet standing by a grave.

In the hoar heaven was hardly beam or breath,
And all the coloured hills and fields were grey,
And the wind wandered seeking for the day,
And wailed as though he had found her done to death
And this grey hour had built to bury her
The hollow twilight for a sepulchre.

But in my soul I saw as in a glass
A pale and living body full of grace
There lying, and over ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs