And beauty, making beautiful old rhyme.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Sonnet cvi.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee: I 'll call thee Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!

Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,

Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,

Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,

Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws

To cast thee up again. What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous, and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 4.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Making their lives a prayer.

John G Whittier (1807-892): To A. K. On receiving a Basket of Sea-Mosses.