Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite;

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,

And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age.

Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,

Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 274.

The hooded clouds, like friars,

Tell their beads in drops of rain.

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): Midnight Mass.

With crosses, relics, crucifixes,

Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes,—

The tools of working our salvation

By mere mechanic operation.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part iii. Canto i. Line 1495.

I envy them, those monks of old;

Their books they read, and their beads they told.

G. P. R. James (1801-1860): The Monks of Old.