In her sweetest saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night.
* * * * * * * *
Sweet bird that shunn’st the noise of folly
Most musical, most melancholy.
Milton, Il Penseroso.
In Titus Andronĭcus the sons of Tamŏra, after defiling Lavinia, cut off her tongue and hands, but she wrote her tale in the sand with a staff held in her mouth and guided by her arms.
Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sewed her mind.
But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;