O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! / The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword; / The expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, / The observed of all observers, quite, quite down! Ham., iii. 1.
O what a tangled web we weave / When first we practise to deceive. Scott.
O what a world is this, when what is comely / Envenoms him that bears it! As You Like It, ii. 3.
O what a world of vile ill-favoured faults / 35 Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year! Merry Wives, iii. 4.
O what men dare do! what men may do! / What men daily do, not knowing what they do! Much Ado, iv. 1.
O woman! in our hours of ease / Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, / And variable as the shade / By the light of quivering aspen made; / When pain and anguish wring the brow, / A ministering angel thou. Scott.
O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye who, wide-scattered, still toil lonely in the monster-bearing desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood,—yet a little while, and we shall all meet There, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more. Carlyle.
O yet we trust that somehow good / Will be the final goal of ill. Tennyson.
Oaks fall when reeds stand. Pr.
Oars alone can ne'er prevail / To reach the 5 distant coast; / The breath of heav'n must swell the sail, / Or all the toil is lost. Cowper.