I cannot live withYouö It would be Lifeö And Life is over thereö Behind the Shelf.

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1862  Complete Poems, no.640 (first published1890).

If only to be born were being invented Merely, or, better still, to concoct oneself From an antique alembic, a receipt. How splendid To take the phial cleanly from its shelf; Powders and liquids, all one's favourite hues Making the being one would be, the looker at stars Or storks on the spires of Denmark, drinker of dews, Or an eye simply.

-Doyle, Charles (Mike)
'Phials', collected in Quadrant,1964.

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as earlyas you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

-Larkin, Philip Arthur
  'This Be  the Verse'.

People find ideas a bore becausetheydo not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

-Pound, Ezra Loomis
  Guide to Kulcher, pt.1, section1, ch.5.