Far from mortal cares retreating,

Sordid hopes and vain desires,

Here, our willing footsteps meeting,

Every heart to heaven aspires.

Jane Taylor (1783-1824): Hymn.

With mortal crisis doth portend

My days to appropinque an end.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto iii. Line 589.

Vital spark of heavenly flame!

Quit, O quit this mortal frame!

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Dying Christian to his Soul.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Love.

Yet tears to human suffering are due;

And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown

Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Laodamia.

A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing;

Our helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.

Martin Luther (1483-1546): Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (trans. by Frederic H. Hedge).

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:

The Genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act ii. Sc. 1.

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night thoughts. Night i. Line 424.

Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould

Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 244.

The time has been,

That when the brains were out the man would die,

And there an end; but now they rise again,

With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,

And push us from our stools.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 4.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart

Which found no mortal resting-place so fair

As thine ideal breast.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 115.

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,

A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,

He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

William Knox (1789-1825): Mortality.

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 1.

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,

'T is that I may not weep.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto iv. Stanza 4.

The man forget not, though in rags he lies,

And know the mortal through a crown's disguise.

Mark Akenside (1721-1770): Epistle to Curio.

He rais'd a mortal to the skies,

She drew an angel down.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Alexander's Feast. Line 169.