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.

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.