The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate;

Death lays his icy hands on kings.

James Shirley (1596-1666): Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Sc. 3.

Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,

He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Princess. Part vii. Line 308.

When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!

John Dryden (1631-1701): Cymon and Iphigenia. Line 41.

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul

Lends the tongue vows.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 3.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act ii. Sc. 2.

The cold in clime are cold in blood,

Their love can scarce deserve the name.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 1099.

Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,

In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,

Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act ii. Sc. 2.

On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,

His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 385.

Earth helped him with the cry of blood.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Song at the Feast of Broughton Castle.

Where, where was Roderick then?

One blast upon his bugle horn

Were worth a thousand men.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lady of the Lake. Canto vi. Stanza 18.

Bone and Skin, two millers thin,

Would starve us all, or near it;

But be it known to Skin and Bone

That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.

John Byrom (1691-1763): Epigram on Two Monopolists.

I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand an end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate;

Death lays his icy hands on kings.

James Shirley (1596-1666): Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Sc. 3.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 15.

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 83.

Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 6.

We understood

Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought

That one might almost say her body thought.

Dr John Donne (1573-1631): Funeral Elegies. On the Death of Mistress Drury.

At your age

The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,

And makes his pulses fly,

To catch the thrill of a happy voice

And the light of a pleasant eye.

Nathaniel P Willis (1817-1867): Saturday Afternoon.

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!

From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,

That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war,

Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): On the Entry of the Austrians into Naples, 1821.

This is the very coinage of your brain:

This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

A man whose blood

Is very snow-broth; one who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 4.

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.

Child Rowland to the dark tower came,

His word was still,—Fie, foh, and fum,

I smell the blood of a British man.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Lear. Act iii. Sc. 4.

What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 215.

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 3.

A ruddy drop of manly blood

The surging sea outweighs;

The world uncertain comes and goes,

The lover rooted stays.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Essays. First Series. Epigraph to Friendship.

The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,

A savageness in unreclaimed blood.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

For all that faire is, is by nature good;

That is a signe to know the gentle blood.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): An Hymne in Honour of Beautie. Line 139.

O God! that bread should be so dear,

And flesh and blood so cheap!

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): The Song of the Shirt.

We understood

Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought

That one might almost say her body thought.

Dr John Donne (1573-1631): Funeral Elegies. On the Death of Mistress Drury.

I am in blood

Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 4.

The blood more stirs

To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act i. Sc. 3.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good.

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Personal Talk. Stanza 3.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility;

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act iii. Sc. 1.

O great corrector of enormous times,

Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider

Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood

The earth when it is sick, and curest the world

O' the pleurisy of people!

Beaumont And Fletcher: The Two Noble Kinsmen. Act v. Sc. 1.

I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand an end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.

A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,

His eye was dim and cold,

The hairs on his brow were silver-white,

And his blood was thin and old.

Thomas K Hervey (1799-1859): The Devil's Progress.

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,

Fallen from his high estate,

And welt'ring in his blood;

Deserted, at his utmost need,

By those his former bounty fed,

On the bare earth expos'd he lies,

With not a friend to close his eyes.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Alexander's Feast. Line 77.

What potent blood hath modest May!

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): May-Day.

The blood will follow where the knife is driven,

The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.

Edward Young (1684-1765): The Revenge. Act v. Sc. 2.

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1809-1861): Lady Geraldine's Courtship. xli.