I have found out a gift for my fair;

I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.

William Shenstone (1714-1763): A Pastoral. Part i.

My latest found,

Heaven's last, best gift, my ever new delight!

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book v. Line 18.

No man ought to looke a given horse in the mouth.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part i. Chap. v.

He ne'er consider'd it, as loth

To look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 490.

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast

The fatal gift of beauty.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 42.

Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,

And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Moral Essays. Epistle iv. Line 43.

Every gift of noble origin

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): These Times strike Monied Worldlings.

O gracious God! how far have we

Profan'd thy heavenly gift of poesy!

John Dryden (1631-1701): Elegy on Mrs. Killegrew. Line 56.

The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift,

That no philosophy can lift.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Presentiments.

Rare gift! but oh what gift to fools avails!

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book x. Line 29.

If ladies be but young and fair,

They have the gift to know it; and in his brain,

Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit

After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd

With observation, the which he vents

In mangled forms.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 7.

True love's the gift which God has given

To man alone beneath the heaven:

It is not fantasy's hot fire,

Whose wishes soon as granted fly;

It liveth not in fierce desire,

With dead desire it doth not die;

It is the secret sympathy,

The silver link, the silken tie,

Which heart to heart and mind to mind

In body and in soul can bind.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 13.