With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.

-Book of Common Prayer
Solemnization of Marriage, Wedding.

Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,ö And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as Nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul. Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again,ö The grand Perhaps.

-Browning, Robert
  Men and Women,'Bishop Blougram's  Apology'.

It is all too rare today to hear the clear, clean ring of a really original insult.

-Carrigan,Jim R(ichard)
  In Time, 28  Aug.

The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame Still sat unconquered in a ring, Remembering him like anything.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  'Shakespeare Memorial'.

   Wanwordy, crazy, dinsome thing, As e'er was fram'd to jow or ring, What gar'd them sic in steeple hing They ken themsel', 320

-Fergusson, Robert
US  politician  and diplomat,  congresswoman  from  New Jersey (1975^83). She compiled theVogue Book of Etiquette (1948).

  We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. 339

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'The Secret Sits', complete poem.

   Love, you shall perfect for me this child Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking: Within new limits now, arrange the world And square the circle: four walls and a ring.

-Heaney, SeamusJustin
  Death of a Naturalist,'Poem: For Marie'.

I started out very quiet and I beat MrTurgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr De Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one.But nobody's going to get me in any ring with MrTolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.

-Hemingway, Ernest Millar
  In the NewYorker,13 May.

Pussy said to the Owl,'You elegant Fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?' They sailed away for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-tree grows, And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose.

-Lear, Edward
Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat'.

'Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?' Said the Piggy,'I will.'

-Lear, Edward
Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat'.

No physical activity is so vain as boxing. A man gets into the ring to attract admiration. In no sport, therefore, can you be more humiliated.

-Mailer, Norman Kingsley
  The Fight.

This pretty ring† I will give it to the first man who tells me he would like to be a woman. It is delightful to be a woman; but every man thanks the Lord devoutly that he isn't one.

-Iron
  The Story of an African Farm, ch.17,'Lyndall'.

With each generation the entire race passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing withtheindeliblemarks ofthat mould upon it, that as the os cervix of woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head†so exactly the intellectual capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the limits of expansion of the human race. 720

-Iron
Women and Labour, ch.3.

And 'while the world runs round and round,' I said, 'Reign thou apart, a quiet king, Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade Sleeps on his luminous ring.'

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Palace of Art', stanza 4, l.13^16.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year isgoing, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

-Tennyson
  In Memoriam A.H.H., canto106, l.1^8.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; 844 Ring in the Christ that is to be.

-Tennyson
  In Memoriam A.H.H., canto106, l.17^32.

One Ring to rule them all,One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

-Tolkien,J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel)
  The Fellowship of the Ring, epigraph and passim.

I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it,Time in hours, days, years Driven by the spheres Like a vast shadow moved.

-Vaughan, Henry
  Silex Scintillans,'TheWorld'.