sternlier

English

Adverb

sternlier

1. (rare, poetic) comparative form of sternly: more sternly
   • a. 1839, John Fitchett, edited by Robert Roscoe, King Alfred: A Poem, volume V, London: William Pickering, published 1842, page 384, lines 1473–1474:

     To whom, as more amazed and sternlier stung, / Faltering, the traitor urged this wild address: […]

   • 1843 June, G[eorge] P[aulin], “Rhymed Sketches of Scottish Peasant Life”, in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine for 1843, volume X, number CXIV, Edinburgh: William Tait, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.; Dublin: John Cumming, section I, page 384, column 1:

     And haply, with the cream of sacred lore / Was blent some modern’s sweet but thrilling tale, / That made his eye gleam sternlier than before,— / A tale of Times when Scotland’s stifled wail, / And Persecutor’s shout, were blent on every gale.

   • 1865, John Poyer, “The Lady Godiva”, in St. Thomas à Becket; and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], page 94:

     In vain she’d sought through many a striving hour / The word to break which stole the people’s bread; / His freezing brow did but the darker lower, / While sternlier to his will the tax he wed.

   • 1869, Robert Browning, “X. The Pope.”, in The Ring and the Book. […], volume IV, London: Smith, Elder and Co., →OCLC, pages 53–54, lines 1224–1228:

     Accept the swift and rueful death, / Taught, somewhat sternlier than is wont, what waits / The ambiguous creature,—how the one black tuft / Steadies the aim of the arrow just as well / As the wide faultless white on the bird’s breast.

   • 1894, Henrik Ibsen, translated by C[harles] H[arold] Herford, Brand: A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts, London: William Heinemann, page 95:

     I know no law that sternlier deals / With strangers than with kindred blood.

   • a. 1925, Manmohan Ghose, edited by Lotika Ghose, Adam Alarmed in Paradise: An Epic of Eden During The Great War (Collected Poems; IV), [Kolkata]: University of Calcutta, published 1977, book I, canto VI, page 69:

     Even when Luther purged, / Trimmed the sacred fire, / Sternlier Calvin urged, / Then did he expire.

   • 1943 July 21, Leslie Pinckney Hill, “Of Preparedness”, in Charles Clayton Morrison, editor, The Christian Century, Chicago, Ill.: Christian Century Press, page 845, column 2:

     NOW not alone against a world on fire / Must preparation speed. Sure, the great gun / Must be supplied ton on unnumbered ton / Of quick munition. Faster, farther, higher / The deadly plane must flash, and the entire / Substance and spirit of the land be won / For that impregnable, last bastion / Which freedom’s dear necessities require. / But, sternlier still, for this we must prepare: / To cast out devils, yet refuse to be / Devils in turn; […]

   • 1946, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by J[ames] B[lair] Leishman, Sonnets to Orpheus, 2nd edition, London: The Hogarth Press, […], published 1949, section X, page 107:

     Checking the glorious hand’s flaunting of lovelier leisure, now for some stubborner work sternlier it fashions the stone.