Careful Words

moss (n.)

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Ode to the West Wind.

Through moss and through brake.

Robert Southey (1774-1843): The Cataract of Lodore.

The rolling stone never gathereth mosse.

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

Through the laburnum's dropping gold

Rose the light shaft of Orient mould,

And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,

Purpled the mossbeds at its feet.

John Keble (1792-1866): The Palm-Tree.

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,

The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well.

Samuel Woodworth (1785-1842): The Old Oaken Bucket.