Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 859.

Give me a look, give me a face,

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free,—

Such sweet neglect more taketh me

Than all the adulteries of art:

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

Ben Jonson (1573-1637): Epicoene; Or, the Silent Woman. Act i. Sc. 1.

She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,

Can draw you to her with a single hair.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Persius. Satire v. Line 246.

Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Rape of the Lock. Canto ii. Line 27.

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge

Had stomach for them all.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

He could distinguish and divide

A hair 'twixt south and southwest side.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 67.

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.

She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,

Can draw you to her with a single hair.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Persius. Satire v. Line 246.

An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,

And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): Davideis. Book ii. Line 95.

With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,

And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Princess. Prologue. Line 141.

His hair just grizzled,

As in a green old age.

John Dryden (1631-1701): oedipus. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Bard. I. 2, Line 5.

That kill the bloom before its time,

And blanch, without the owner's crime,

The most resplendent hair.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lament of Mary Queen of Scots.

My fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in 't: I have supp'd full with horrors.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 5.

But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,

I 'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 1.

I pray thee let me and my fellow have

A haire of the dog that bit us last night.

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

And Katerfelto, with his hair on end

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.

'T is pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,

To peep at such a world,—to see the stir

Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book iv. The Winter Evening. Line 86.

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever

From the fair head, forever, and forever!

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Rape of the Lock. Canto iii. Line 153.

Incens'd with indignation Satan stood

Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 707.

Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Bard. I. 2, Line 5.

As sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act iv. Sc. 3.

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair.

John Milton (1608-1674): Lycidas. Line 68.

This child is not mine as the first was;

I cannot sing it to rest;

I cannot lift it up fatherly,

And bless it upon my breast.

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,

And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to

Transfigures its golden hair.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Changeling.

My fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in 't: I have supp'd full with horrors.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 5.

Her father loved me; oft invited me;

Still question'd me the story of my life,

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.