prow quotes

By viewing nature, nature's handmaid art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow: Thus fishes first to shipping did impart, Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.

-John Dryden
  Annus Mirabilis, stanza155.

Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.4, l.123^6.