Where eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

Eternal anarchy amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand;

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,

Strive here for mast'ry.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 894.

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,

On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book iv. Canto ii. St. 32.

I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand an end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.

There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd

The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome

As easily as a king.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act i. Sc. 2.

For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,

And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,

Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book vii. Canto xi. St. 33.

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home:

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Edmund Waller (1605-1687): On the Divine Poems.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

Man never is, but always to be blest.

The soul, uneasy and confined from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 95.

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee

To temper man: we had been brutes without you.

Angels are painted fair, to look like you:

There's in you all that we believe of heaven,—

Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

Thomas Otway (1651-1685): Venice Preserved. Act i. Sc. 1.

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,

But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): Davideis. Book i. Line 25.

What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support,

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.

Nor can his blessed soul look down from heaven,

Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Spanish Friar. Act v. Sc. 2.

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 315.

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung.

 .   .   .   .   .

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all except their sun is set.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto iii. Stanza 86. 1.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Sonnet xviii.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,—

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Deserted Village. Line 189.

Since heaven's eternal year is thine.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Elegy on Mrs. Killegrew. Line 15.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,—

The eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,

And dies among his worshippers.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): The Battle-Field.