Cupid and my Campaspe play'd

At cards for kisses: Cupid paid.

He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,

His mother's doves, and team of sparrows:

Loses them too. Then down he throws

The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on's cheek (but none knows how);

With these, the crystal of his brow,

And then the dimple on his chin:

All these did my Campaspe win.

At last he set her both his eyes:

She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

O Love! has she done this to thee?

What shall, alas! become of me?

John Lyly (Circa 1553-1601): Cupid and Campaspe. Act iii. Sc. 5.

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,

Flushing his brow.

John Keats (1795-1821): The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 16.

We see time's furrows on another's brow,

And death intrench'd, preparing his assault;

How few themselves in that just mirror see!

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night v. Line 627.

Look here, upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See, what a grace was seated on this brow:

Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;

A station like the herald Mercury

New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,—

A combination and a form indeed,

Where every god did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a man.

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

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,—

Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 182.

Go, forget me! why should sorrow

O'er that brow a shadow fling?

Go, forget me, and to-morrow

Brightly smile and sweetly sing!

Smile,—though I shall not be near thee;

Sing,—though I shall never hear thee!

Charles Wolfe (1791-1823): Go, forget me!

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.

O woman! in our hours of ease

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Marmion. Canto vi. Stanza 30.

John Anderson my jo, John,

When we were first acquent,

Your locks were like the raven,

Your bonny brow was brent.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): John Anderson.