Alas, the love of women! it is known

To be a lovely and a fearful thing.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto ii. Stanza 199.

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, act in the living present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): A Psalm of Life.

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight,

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,

Like twilights too her dusky hair,

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful dawn.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): She was a Phantom of Delight.

But an old age serene and bright,

And lovely as a Lapland night,

Shall lead thee to thy grave.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): To a Young Lady. Dear Child of Nature.

O thou weed,

Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born.

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

Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;

And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;

Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night iii. Line 104.

She's adorned

Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely,—

The truest mirror that an honest wife

Can see her beauty in.

John Tobin (1770-1804): The Honeymoon. Act iii. Sc. 4.

The sky is changed,—and such a change! O night

And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,

Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light

Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,

Leaps the live thunder.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 92.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 2.

In naked beauty more adorn'd,

More lovely than Pandora.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 713.

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep

Into his study of imagination,

And every lovely organ of her life,

Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,

More moving-delicate and full of life

Into the eye and prospect of his soul.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 1.

She's all my fancy painted her;

She's lovely, she's divine.

William Mee: Alice Gray.

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,

Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.

War, he sung, is toil and trouble;

Honour but an empty bubble;

Never ending, still beginning,

Fighting still, and still destroying.

If all the world be worth the winning,

Think, oh think it worth enjoying:

Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Alexander's Feast. Line 97.

When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can soothe her melancholy?

What art can wash her guilt away?

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Hermit. On Woman. Chap. xxiv.