How oft do they their silver bowers leave

To come to succour us that succour want!

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book ii. Canto viii. St. 2.

  Rom.  Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—

  Jul.  O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

His golden locks time hath to silver turned;

O time too swift! Oh swiftness never ceasing!

His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,

But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing.

George Peele (1552-1598): Sonnet. Polyhymnia.

Just for a handful of silver he left us,

Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): The Lost Leader. i.

The moon had climb'd the highest hill

Which rises o'er the source of Dee,

And from the eastern summit shed

Her silver light on tower and tree.

John Lowe (1750-1798): Mary's Dream.

Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 221.

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.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad;

Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament

With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 598.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,—

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1.

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,

Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggar'd all description.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Antony and Cleopatra. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Calm on the listening ear of night

Come Heaven's melodious strains,

Where wild Judea stretches far

Her silver-mantled plains.

Edmund H Sears (1810-1876): Christmas Song.

How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,

Like softest music to attending ears!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,

His eye was dim and cold,

The hairs on his brow were silver-white,

And his blood was thin and old.

Thomas K Hervey (1799-1859): The Devil's Progress.

When daisies pied and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2.