Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;

Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own rede.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 3.

O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature's soft nurse! how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,

No towers along the steep;

Her march is o'er the mountain waves,

Her home is on the deep.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Ye Mariners of England.

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,

With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,

And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 948.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

John Milton (1608-1674): Hymn on Christ's Nativity. Line 173.

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,

Where nothing save the waves and I

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;

There, swan-like, let me sing and die.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto iii. Stanza 86. 16.

Ere the blabbing eastern scout,

The nice morn, on th' Indian steep

From her cabin'd loop-hole peep.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 138.

Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar?

James Beattie (1735-1803): The Minstrel. Book i. Stanza 1.