Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying,

And this same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674): To the Virgins to make much of Time.

The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite,—a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm

By thoughts supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

Who first invented work, and bound the free

And holiday-rejoicing spirit down

   .   .   .   .   .   .

To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?

   .   .   .   .   .   .

Sabbathless Satan!

Charles Lamb (1775-1834): Work.

I 've often wish'd that I had clear,

For life, six hundred pounds a year;

A handsome house to lodge a friend;

A river at my garden's end;

A terrace walk, and half a rood

Of land set out to plant a wood.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Imitation of Horace, Book ii. Sat. 6.

To those who know thee not, no words can paint!

And those who know thee, know all words are faint!

Hannah More (1745-1833): Sensibility.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Tables Turned.

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): The Death of the Flowers.

I pull in resolution, and begin

To doubt the equivocation of the fiend

That lies like truth: "Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane."

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 5.

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 3.

Some have been beaten till they know

What wood a cudgel's of by th' blow;

Some kick'd until they can feel whether

A shoe be Spanish or neat's leather.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part ii. Canto i. Line 221.

Such sights as youthful poets dream

On summer eyes by haunted stream.

Then to the well-trod stage anon,

If Jonson's learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild.

John Milton (1608-1674): L'Allegro. Line 129.

I have found out a gift for my fair;

I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.

William Shenstone (1714-1763): A Pastoral. Part i.