Careful Words

womb (n.)

Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew,

And her conception of the joyous Prime.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book iii. Canto vi. St. 3.

Into this wild abyss,

The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 910.

  These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.

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

  Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

Old Testament: Psalm cx. 3.

  The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.

Book Of Common Prayer: The Psalter. Psalm cx. 3.

For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night?

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 146.