Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust,
  Or flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
720
GRAY:  Elegy, St. 11.

=Flea.=

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
721
SWIFT:  Poetry, A Rhapsody.

=Flesh.=

Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! 722 SHAKS.:  Hamlet, Act v., Sc. 1.

=Flirtation.=

Never wedding, ever wooing,
Still a love-lorn heart pursuing,
Read you not the wrong you’re doing,
In my cheek’s pale hue? 
All my life with sorrow strewing,
Wed, or cease to woo.
723
CAMPBELL:  Maid’s Remonstrance.

=Flood.=

Darest thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point?
724
SHAKS.:  Jul.  Caesar, Act i., Sc. 2.

=Flowers.=

The gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds.
725
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT:  Death of the Flowers.

Flowers preach to us if we will hear. 726 CHRIS. G. ROSSETTI:  Consider the Lilies of the Field.

In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers
On its leaves a mystic language bears.
727
J.G.  PERCIVAL:  Language of the Flowers.

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost. 728 COLERIDGE:  Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.

=Foe.=

Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe, Bold I can meet,—­perhaps may turn his blow!  But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend! 729 GEORGE CANNING:  New Morality.

=Folly.=

Fools, to talking ever prone,
Are sure to make their follies known.
730
GAY:  Fables, Pt. i., Fable 44.

Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it, If folly grow romantic, I must paint it. 731 POPE:  Moral Essays, Epis. ii., Line 15.

Where lives the man that has not tried
How mirth can into folly glide,
  And folly into sin!
732
SCOTT:  Bridal of Triermain, Canto i., St. 21.

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
  And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy? 
  What art can wash her guilt away?
733
GOLDSMITH:  The Hermit, Ch. xxiv.

=Fools.=

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. 734 BYRON:  English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 6.

Since call’d
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.
735
MILTON:  Par.  Lost, Bk. iii., Line 495.

And ever since the Conquest have been fools. 736 EARL OF ROCHESTER:  Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country.