Then let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.

He who hath bent him o'er the dead

Ere the first day of death is fled,—

The first dark day of nothingness,

The last of danger and distress,

Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 68.

'T is education forms the common mind:

Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Moral Essays. Epistle i. Line 149.

Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain,

Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;

Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,

The big drops mingling with the milk he drew

Gave the sad presage of his future years,—

The child of misery, baptized in tears.

John Langhorne (1735-1779): The Country Justice. Part i.

That though on pleasure she was bent,

She had a frugal mind.

William Cowper (1731-1800): History of John Gilpin.

They fool me to the top of my bent.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 2.