Wildlife

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Lines 136-150

"A fearful form appeared, framed in the door:

A mountain of a man, immeasurably high,

A hulk of a human from head top hips,

So long and thick in his loins and his limbs

I should genuinely judge him to be a half giant,

Or a most massive man, the mightiest of mortals.

But handsome, too, like any horseman worth his horse,

For despite the bulk and brawn of his body

His stomach and waist were slender and sleek.

In fact in all features he was finely formed it seemed.

Amazement seized their minds

No soul has ever seen

A knight of such kind-

Entirely emerald green."

Lines 174-178

"And the horse: every hair was green, from hoof to mane.

A steed of pure green stock.

Each snort and shudder strained

The hand-stitched bridle, but

His rider had him reined."

Lines 1586-1590

"Aware that the man was wafting a weapon

The hog’s hairs stood on end, and it’s howling grunt

Made the fellows there fear for their master’s fate.

Then the boar burst forward, bounded at the lord,

So that the beast and hunter both went bundling"

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder Whoso list to Hunt (Petrarch, Rima 190)

"A white doe on the green grass appeared to me, with two golden horns, between two rivers, in the shade of a laurel, when the sun was rising in the unripe season.

Her look was so sweet and proud that to follow her I left every task, like the miser who as he seeks treasure sweetens his trouble with delight.

"Let no one touch me," she bore written with diamonds and topazes around her lovely neck. “It has pleased my Caesar to make me free."

And the sun had already turned at midday; my eyes were tired by looking but not sated, when I fell into the water, and she disappeared."

Henry Howard, The Soote Season

"The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,

With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale.

The nightingale with feathers new she sings;

The turtle to her make hath told her tale.

Summer is come, for every spray now springs.

The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;

The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;

The fishes float with new repaired scale;

The adder all her slough away she slings;

The switft swallow pursueth the flies small;

The busy bee her honey now she mings."

The Tempest

Act 1, Scene 2

Ariel's Song

"Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Courtsied when you have and kiss'd

The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark!

Burthen [dispersedly, within]

The watch-dogs bark!

Burthen Bow-wow

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.”

Act 2, Scene 2

CALIBAN

"But they'll nor pinch,

Fright me with urchin--shows, pitch me i' the mire,

Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark

Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but

For every trifle are they set upon me;

Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me

And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which

Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount

Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I

All wound with adders who with cloven tongues

Do hiss me into madness."

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1

Lines 197-202

"As whom the fables name of monstrous size,

Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,

Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast

Leviathan, which God in all his works

Created hugest that swim th’ ocean stream."

Aemilia Lanyer, Eve's Apology in Defense of Women

Lines 19-24

"Our mother Eve, who tasted of the tree,

Giving to Adam what she held most dear,

Was simply good, and had no power to see;

The after-coming harm did not appear:

The subtle serpent that our sex betrayed

Before our fall so sure a plot had laid."