Through thick and thin, both over bank and bush,

In hope her to attain by hook or crook.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book iii. Canto i. St. 17.

And while I at length debate and beate the bush,

There shall steppe in other men and catch the burdes.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part i. Chap. iii.

Good wine needs no bush.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Epilogue.

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,

For talking age and whispering lovers made.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Deserted Village. Line 13.

For what are they all in their high conceit,

When man in the bush with God may meet?

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Good Bye.

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.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;

The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VI. Part III. Act v. Sc. 6.