As is the bud bit with an envious worm

Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,

Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act i. Sc. 1.

A flower, when offered in the bud,

Is no vain sacrifice.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): Divine Songs. Song xii.

The bud is on the bough again,

The leaf is on the tree.

Charles Jefferys (1807-1865): The Meeting of Spring and Summer.

  Duke.  And what's her history?

  Vio.  A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

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

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

A worm is in the bud of youth,

And at the root of age.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Stanzas subjoined to a Bill of Mortality.

No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,

No arborett with painted blossoms drest

And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd

To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book ii. Canto vi. St. 12.

As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.

John Keats (1795-1821): The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 27.

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,

Death came with friendly care;

The opening bud to heaven conveyed,

And bade it blossom there.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Epitaph on an Infant.