“Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,
Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air.”

“There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.”

“The light was faint, and soft the air
That breathed around the place;
And she was lithe, and tall, and fair,
And with a wayward grace
Her queenly head she bare.”

“One sweet whisper from her came;
And he drank to catch her breath, —
Wine and sigh alike are death!”

“I would remain nearer you for what time there is."

"Gone in one faerie sigh," she quoted.

Leather-clad fingers brushed over her short hair, rested on her cheek. "I can hold my breath.”

“Her heart and lip were music, albeit one
Who marvell'd at what her sweet self had done;
Who breathed for Love, and pined to find that Fame
In answer to her lute's soft summons came;
See, the eye droops in sadness, as to shun
That which it dared not gaze on, Glory's sun.”

“The fact that one of these ladies was my mom made me particularly sad because my mom is beautiful. And she’s always on a diet. Sometimes, my dad calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear him.”

“Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh.”

“Thou shalt bid thy fair hands rove
O'er thy soft lute's silver slumbers,
Waking sounds; of song and love
In their sweet Italian numbers.”

“As when a tigress hears the noise of the hunters, she bristles into her stripes and shakes off the sloth of sleep; athirst for battle she loosens her jaws and flexes her claws, then rushes upon the troop and carries in her mouth a breathing man, food for her bloody young.”
Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris horruit in maculas somnosque excussit inertes, bella cupit laxatque genas et temperat ungues, mox ruit in turmas natisque alimenta cruentis spirantem fert ore virum.