A Whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass, And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk; And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass, And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.
"Poems"
W. B. Yeats
Ridiculously volatile He seemed to her last spark of mind; And that in pallid ash declined Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, Wherein throughout her frame she felt That he, the light wind's libertine, Without a scoff, without a grin, And mannered like the courtly few, Who merely danced when light winds blew, Impervious to beak and claws, Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; Of whom, as actors in old scenes, Had grannam weavers warned their weans, With word, that less than feather-weight, He smote the web like bolt of Fate.
"The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith"
George Meredith
The Princess Aureline would have nothing to say to him, however, because he was wicked as well as rich, so at last the King of the Black-Country gathered his army together and marching against King Whitebeard he conquered him and carried off the Princess Aureline captive.
"The Counterpane Fairy"
Katharine Pyle