Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!

Ah, fields beloved in vain!

Where once my careless childhood stray'd,

A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from ye blow

A momentary bliss bestow.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Stanza 2.

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): In Memoriam. lv. Stanza 2.

A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat;

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

I see a wild civility,—

Do more bewitch me than when art

Is too precise in every part.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674): Delight in Disorder.

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,

And even his failings lean'd to Virtue's side.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Deserted Village. Line 161.

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he owed,

As 't were a careless trifle.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 4.