Careful Words

fabric (n.)

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge

Rose, like an exhalation.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 710.

Fly, dotard, fly!

With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book ii. Line 207.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Tempest. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Silently as a dream the fabric rose,

No sound of hammer or of saw was there.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book v. The Winter Morning Walk. Line 144.

No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;

Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.

Majestic silence!

Reginald Heber (1783-1826): Palestine.