Date: 1838
"Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords / Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole"
preview | full record— Keats, John (1795-1821)
Date: w. 1821, 1840
"For Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world."
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Date: w. 1821, 1840
"What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship - what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave - and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where th...
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Date: 1850
The poet's mind is "best pleased / While she as duteous as the mother dove / Sits brooding, lives not always to that end, / But like the innocent bird, hath goadings on/ That drive her as in trouble through the groves."
preview | full record— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
Date: 1850
"[H]ow eagerly / And with what flashes, as it were, the mind / Turned this way--that way! sportive and alert / And watchful, as a kitten when at play."
preview | full record— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
Date: 1850
"The relation discovered, must be something remote from all the common tracks and sheep-walks made in the mind."
preview | full record— Smith, Sydney (1771-1845)
Date: 1854
"Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction."
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1854
"He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been--in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away--by the fervor of this reproach."
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1864
"Look, now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, / Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, / Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,-- / Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, / Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain; / Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme, / A...
preview | full record— Browning, Robert (1812-1889)
Date: 1868
"The strong man arm'd this moment bind, / The bold usurper of Thy throne, / His armour seize, the carnal mind, / The unbelieving heart of stone, / Out of my flesh the evil tear, / And pluck my soul out of the snare."
preview | full record— Wesley, John and Charles