Richer than rubies,
Dearer than gold,
Woman, true woman,
Glad we behold! [ Old love-song ]

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die. [ Wordsworth ]

Graceful, tossing plume of glowing gold,
Waving lonely on the rocky ledge;
Leaning seaward, lovely to behold,
Clinging to the high cliff's ragged edge. [ Celia Thaxter ]

Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not. [ Emerson ]

Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more. [ Pope ]

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw. [ Pope ]

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch enchanter's wand! itself a nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master hand.
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim.
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes.
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength - a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! [ William Shakespeare ]

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass the tropics, and behold each pole;
When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own soul. [ Davies ]

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest.
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high.
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. [ William Shakespeare ]

Behold the threaden sails.
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. [ William Shakespeare ]

Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ]

Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth. [ St. James ]

Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!
In the soft light of these serenest skies;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,
Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise.
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold
In rosy flushes on the virgin gold. [ William Cullen Bryant ]

Behold, we live through all things, - famine, thirst,
Bereavement, pain; all grief and misery.
All woe and sorrow; life inflicts its worst
On soul and body, - but we cannot die.
Though we be sick, and tired, and faint, and worn, -
Lo, all things can be borne! [ Elizabeth Akers Allen ]

Oh! it is deplorable to behold neglect aiding in the triumph of decay. [ J. Linen ]

Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. [ Jesus of children ]

I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death. [ Bible ]

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. [ Ecclesiates xi:7 ]

The enquiring spirit will not be controlled. We would make certain all, and all behold. [ Sprague ]

This little member can behold the earth, and in a moment view things as high as heaven. [ Charnock ]

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost, their beauty withered, and their verdure lost! [ Pope ]

Heaven hath many tongues to talk of it, more eyes to behold it, but few hearts that rightly affect it. [ Bishop Hall ]

It is delightful, after wandering in the thick darkness of metaphysics, to behold again the fair face of Truth. [ Carlyle ]

Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature. [ I. Watts ]

Behold the morning! Rise up, O youth, and quickly fill thyself with this rosy wine sparkling from the crystal cup of the dawn! [ Omar Khayam ]

Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!

If judges would make their decisions just, they should behold neither plaintiff, defendant, nor pleader, but only the cause itself. [ Livingston ]

Of all the marvelous works of the Deity, perhaps there is nothing that angels behold with such supreme astonishment as a proud man. [ Colton ]

Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us? [ Goethe ]

Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during glory and termless joy. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

It is a revered thing to see an ancient castle not in decay; how much more to behold an ancient family which have stood against the waves and weathers of time! [ Bacon ]

When I behold the passion for ornamentation, and the corresponding power, I feel as if women had so far shown what they are bad for, rather than what they are good for. [ Julia Ward Howe ]

Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? Ay Sir! And the creature run from the cur? There thou might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office. [ William Shakespeare ]

Once for all, beauty remains undemonstrable; it appears to us as in a dream, when we behold the works of the great poets and painters, and, in short, of all feeling artists. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea. Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam. Survey our empire, and behold our home! [ Byron ]

Books are the true metempsychosis, - they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep. [ Beecher ]

Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints. [ Dryden ]

There is before the eyes of men, on the brink of dissolution, a glassy film, which death appears to impart, that they may have a brief prospect of eternity when some behold the angels of light, while others have the demons of darkness before them. [ Cockton ]

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours; and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves, - the creature of habits and infirmities. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails. [ Humboldt ]

You will get more profit from trying to find where beauty is, than in anxiously inquiring what it is. Once for all, it remains undemonstrable; it appears to us, as in a dream, when we behold the works of the great poets and painters; and in short, of all feeling artists; it is a hovering, shining, shadowy form, the outline of which no definition holds. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him. [ Addison ]

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsake me: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. [ Addison ]