What things have we seen, Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtil flame, As if that every one from whence they came, Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolv'd to live a fool, the rest Of his dull life.

-Beaumont, Francis
  Letter to Ben Jonson, verses prefacing  Jonson's Volpone.

His love was passion's essence:öas a tree On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 78.

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead and with its head He went galumphing back. 'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to myarms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy.

-Dodgson
Through the Looking-Glass, ch.1,'Looking-Glass House'.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Love'.

Love's but the frailty of the mind, When 'tis not with ambition joined; A sickly flame, which if not fed expires; And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires.

-Congreve,William
  The Way of the World, act 3, sc.12.

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^1  Dick Swiveller. The Old Curiosity Shop, ch.7.

Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be; Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'Air and  Angels', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.4.

And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into a crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.5.

How, like a moth, the simple maid Still plays around the flame!

-Gay,John
  The Beggar's Opera, act1, sc.4, air 4.

To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Feware wholly dead: Blow on a dead man's embers And a live flame will start.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
  'To Bring the Dead to Life'.

The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.

-Hemans, Felicia ne¤  e Browne
  'Casabianca'.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil† Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wearsman'ssmudgeand sharesman'ssmell: thesoil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'God's Grandeur'.

This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game. Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast, Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.

-Jeffers, (John) Robinson
  Solstice,'Love the Wild Swan'.

   What do the facts we know about a man amount to? Only two things we can know of him, and this by pure soul-intuition: we can know if he is true to the flame of life and love which is inside his heart, or if he is false to it.

-Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)
  Kangaroo, ch.7.

L'amour n'est pas un feu que l'on tient dans la main. Love is not a flame that one holds in the hand. '

-Marguerite d'Angoule"  me
  Heptame¤  ron, pt.47.

If we turn to early Irish literature, as we naturally may, to see what sort of people the Irish were in the infancy of the race, we find ourselves wandering in delighted bewilderment through a darkness shot with lightning and purple flame.

-O'Faolain, Sean
  The Irish.

What thing is love for (well I wot) love is a thing. It is a prick, it is a sting, It is a pretty, pretty thing; It is a fire, it is a coal Whose flame creeps in at every hole.

-Peele, George
c.1591 The Hunting of Cupid.

A most horrid malicious bloody flame† It made me weep to see it.

-Pepys, Samuel
  Observing the Great Fire of London. Diary entry, 2 Sep.

Thus our twin souls in one shall grow, And teach the world new love, Redeem the age and sex, and show A flame fate dares not move: And courting death to be our friend, Our lives, together too, shall end.

-Philips, Katherine ne¤  e Fowler
  'To Mrs. M. A. at Parting'.