Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 14.

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,

And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Stanzas to Augusta.

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

There is a silence where no sound may be,—

In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea,

Or in the wide desert where no life is found.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): Sonnet. Silence.

One simile that solitary shines

In the dry desert of a thousand lines.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Epistle i. Book ii. Line 111.

The keenest pangs the wretched find

Are rapture to the dreary void,

The leafless desert of the mind,

The waste of feelings unemployed.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 957.

Alas! our young affections run to waste,

Or water but the desert.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 120.

Alas! our young affections run to waste,

Or water but the desert.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 120.

Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place,

With one fair spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,

And hating no one, love but only her!

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 177.

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

There is a silence where no sound may be,—

In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea,

Or in the wide desert where no life is found.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): Sonnet. Silence.

A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,

And airy tongues that syllable men's names

On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 205.