Yet once more,O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, opening lines.

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life.

-Rich, Adrienne Cecile
  Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,'Snapshots of a Daughter- in-Law,1'.

One's prime is elusive.You little girls, when you grow up, must be onthealertto recognise your primeat whatever time of your life it may occur.You must live it to the full.

-Spark, Dame Muriel Sarah ne¤  e  Camberg
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, ch.1.

There is continual spring, and harvest there Continual, both meeting at one time: For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime, And eke attonce the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruits load: The whiles the joyous birds make their pastime Amongst the shady leaves, their sweet above, And their true loves without suspicion tell abroad.

-Spenser, Edmund
  Of the Garden of Adonis. The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto 6, stanza 42.