The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,

But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flow'r, but not in this soil;

Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 631.

Gone before

To that unknown and silent shore.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834): Hester. Stanza 7.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,

The lowest of your throng.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 830.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and oh

The difference to me!

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

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.

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,

A youth to fortune and to fame unknown:

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Epitaph.

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act i. Sc. 5.