Date: 1900

"My mind felt like a measure with the feet marked on it, and no matter what I thought of that night, it had to be measured with the same rule.”

— Flora MacDonald Denison (1867-1921)

Date: 1995

Emily Brontë's soul "goes skimming the deep keel like a storm petrel, / out of sight."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"Gradually I understood that these were naked glimpses of my soul."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"Soul is the place, / stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind, / where such necessity grinds itself out"

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"I came / again and again, each time accumulating lucidity, // until at last I was floating high up near the ceiling looking down / on the two souls clasped there on the bed /with their mortal boundaries // visible around them like lines on a map."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"Mornings when I meditated / I was presented with a nude glimpse of my lone soul, / not the complex mysteries of love and hate."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

But the Nudes are still as clear in my mind / as pieces of laundry that froze on the clothesline overnight."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"She has reversed the roles of thou and Thou / not as a display of power but to force out of herself some pity / for this soul trapped in glass, / which is her true creation."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"Inside the dark sky of his mind / Isaac could hear God / moving down a country road bordered by trees."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)