Careful Words

garland (n.)

garland (v.)

  A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.

John Milton (1608-1674): The Reason of Church Government. Introduction, Book ii.

All a green willow, willow,

All a green willow is my garland.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): The Green Willow.

  I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

John Milton (1608-1674): Areopagitica.

O, wither'd is the garland of the war,

The soldier's pole is fallen.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Antony and Cleopatra. Act iv. Sc. 15.

The sweetest garland to the sweetest maid.

Thomas Tickell (1686-1740): To a Lady with a Present of Flowers.