Careful Words

bloom (n.)

bloom (v.)

bloom (adj.)

Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate

Full on thy bloom.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): To a Mountain Daisy.

But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

Or, like the snow-fall in the river,

A moment white, then melts forever.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Tam o' Shanter.

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom;

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894): The Last Leaf.

O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move

The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Progress of Poesy. I. 3, Line 16.

  Of surpassing beauty and in the bloom of youth.

Terence (185-159 b c): Andria. Act i. Sc. 1, 45. (72.)

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right;

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Present Crisis.

Thus with the year

Seasons return; but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,

Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark

Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men

Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd,

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iii. Line 40.

That kill the bloom before its time,

And blanch, without the owner's crime,

The most resplendent hair.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lament of Mary Queen of Scots.