“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

These six words appeared in print for the first time in an anonymous poem.

A poetical Rhapsody – a collection of “diver’s sonnets, odes, elegies, madrigals and other Poesies” was printed by two English brothers Francis and Walter Davison in 1602.

It achieved the status of a cliché when Thomas Haynes Bayly used it in a popular song “Isle of beauty” in the early 19th century.