Here the heart

May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon. Line 85.

So slippery that

The fear's as bad as falling.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act iii. Sc. 3.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column,

In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): The Ovidian Elegiac Metre. (From Schiller.)

'T is a cruelty

To load a falling man.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act v. Sc. 3.

Press not a falling man too far!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

The falling of a tear,

The upward glancing of an eye

When none but God is near.

James Montgomery (1771-1854): What is Prayer?

A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,

And greatly falling with a falling state.

While Cato gives his little senate laws,

What bosom beats not in his country's cause?

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato.

Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,

In ruin and confusion hurled,

He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,

And stand secure amidst a falling world.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Horace. Ode iii. Book iii.

O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!

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