sternlier

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

a. 1839, John Fitchett, edited by Robert Roscoe, King Alfred: A Poem, volume V, London: William Pickering, published 1842, page 384, lines 1473–1474

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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