Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame:
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show,
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? [ O. W. Holmes ]

Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,
Brought from a pensive through a happy place. [ Wordsworth ]

A pensive soul feeds upon nothing but bitters. [ Proverb ]

Through the lone groves would pace in solemn mood.
Wooing the pensive charms of solitude. [ Pye ]

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and hollyhock. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The fact is, that of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn, We speak rashly of gay color and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most. [ Thomas Starr King ]