Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Gift
A present is provided for my love; for I have myself marked the place where the airy wood-pigeons have built.
Davidson’s Virgil, by Buckley, Part IX.
I indeed will give presently to the maiden a ringdove, having taken it from the juniper—for there it broods.
Banks.—Theocritus, Idyll V. Page 31.
I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say ’twas a barbarous deed.
For he ne’er could be true, she averr’d,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov’d her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
Shenstone.—Ballad on Hope, Verse 5.
He ne’er consider’d it as loath
To look a gift-horse in the mouth,
And very wisely would lay forth
No more upon it than ’twas worth.
Butler.—Hudibras, Part I. Canto I. Line 489.