Apostrophe (figure of speech)

Examples

• "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55, Paul the Apostle

• "O God! God!" Hamlet, act 1, scene 2
• "Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." Macbeth, act 2, scene 1
• "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die." Romeo and Juliet, act 5, scene 3, 169–170.
• "To what green altar, O mysterious priest, / Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, / And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?" John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
• "O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!" Sir Walter Raleigh, A Historie of the World
• "Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!" Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
• "Roll on, thou dark and deep blue Ocean – roll!" Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
• "Thou glorious sun!" Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "This Lime Tree Bower"
• "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so." John Donne, "Holy Sonnet X"
• "And you, Eumaeus..." Homer, the Odyssey 14.55, κτλ.
• "O My friends, there is no friend." Montaigne, originally attributed to Aristotle
• "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!" Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
• "O black night, nurse of the golden eyes!" Electra in Euripides' Electra, in the translation by David Kovacs.
• "Then come, sweet death, and rid me of this grief." Queen Isabel in Edward II by Christopher Marlowe