Flowers of the Forest

And other laments and poetry, to boot.

In 1765 the wit and socialite Alison Cockburn published her lyrics to the Flowers of the Forest beginning "I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling" said to have been written before her marriage in 1731 . It concerns a financial crisis that had ruined the fortunes of a number of the Selkirk Lairds. Later biographers, however, think it probable that it was written on the departure to London of a certain John Aikman, with whom Alison appears to have had an early attachment.
*all this above is from Wikipedia

The first verse runs

I've seen the smiling
Of fortune beguiling,
I've tasted her pleasures,
And felt her decay;
Sweet is her blessing,
And kind her caressing,
But now they are fled
And fled far away.

Here's some Rudyard Kipling taken from a poem "The Young British Soldier"

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

And last (some more) here's some Tennyson (circa 1889) that might also appeal to the reader:
It is from a poem called "Crossing the Bar".

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

And here's one more from the WWI timeframe:

The first chapter of In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (a 1919 collection of poems by John McCrae) gives the text of the poem as follows:


In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

An autographed copy of the poem (reproduced at the start of this same book) uses grow (instead of blow) in the first line. The book includes a note seeking to explain the discrepancy by saying "This was probably written from memory".