O Lady, he is dead and gone!

Lady, he's dead and gone!

And at his head a green grass turfe,

And at his heels a stone.

Thomas Percy (1728-1811): The Friar of Orders Gray.

Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,

And some before the speaker.

W M Praed (1802-1839): School and Schoolfellows.

As cold as any stone.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act ii. Sc. 3.

Fling but a stone, the giant dies.

Matthew Green (1696-1737): The Spleen. Line 93.

The rolling stone never gathereth mosse.

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

With useless endeavour

Forever, forever,

Is Sisyphus rolling

His stone up the mountain!

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): The Masque of Pandora. Chorus of the Eumenides.

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.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Ode on Solitude.

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 hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew:

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): The Problem.

Underneath this stone doth lie

As much beauty as could die;

Which in life did harbour give

To more virtue than doth live.

Ben Jonson (1573-1637): Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H.

As when, O lady mine!

With chiselled touch

The stone unhewn and cold

Becomes a living mould.

The more the marble wastes,

The more the statue grows.

Michelangelo (1474-1564): Sonnet.

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye;

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): She dwelt among the untrodden ways.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658): To Althea from Prison, iv.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,

But we left him alone with his glory.

Charles Wolfe (1791-1823): The Burial of Sir John Moore.