O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted,

Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.

John Milton (1608-1674): Ode on the Death of a fair Infant, dying of a Cough.

True love's the gift which God has given

To man alone beneath the heaven:

It is not fantasy's hot fire,

Whose wishes soon as granted fly;

It liveth not in fierce desire,

With dead desire it doth not die;

It is the secret sympathy,

The silver link, the silken tie,

Which heart to heart and mind to mind

In body and in soul can bind.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 13.