Who hath not proved how feebly words essay

To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?

Who doth not feel, until his failing sight

Faints into dimness with its own delight,

His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess

The might, the majesty of loveliness?

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Bride of Abydos. Canto i. Stanza 6.

Misled by fancy's meteor ray,

By passion driven;

But yet the light that led astray

Was light from heaven.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): The Vision.

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,

Adorns and cheers our way;

And still, as darker grows the night,

Emits a brighter ray.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Captivity. Act ii.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 14.

Oh, blest with temper whose unclouded ray

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day!

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Moral Essays. Epistle ii. Line 257.

Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale,

And guide my lonely way

To where yon taper cheers the vale

With hospitable ray.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Hermit. Chap. viii. Stanza 1.

Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life,

The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,

And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Bride of Abydos. Canto ii. Stanza 20.