Date: 1667

"Too promising, too great a mind/ In so small room to be confin'd"

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"By giving thy Soul room to move: / Affording scene unto that mind, / Which is too great to be confin'd. [...]Thou mightst retire, but who e're meant / A Palace for a Tenement"

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"And as in Palaces the outmost, worst / Rooms entertain our wonder at the first; / But once within the Presence-Chamber door, / We do despise what e're we saw before: / So when you with her Mind acquaintance get, / You'l hardly think upon the Cabinet."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"Thy Heart locks up my Secrets richly set, / And my Breast is thy private Cabinet."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"And yet those Souls, when first they met, / Lookt out at windows through the Eyes."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"And though 'tis true she [the soul] is imprison'd here, / Yet hath she Notions of her own, / Which Sense doth only jog, awake, and clear, / But cannot at the first make known."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"So unconcern'd she lives, so much above / The Rubbish of a sordid Jail, / That nothing doth her Energy improve / So much as when those structures fail."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1684

"In proper Cells her large capacious Brain / The images of all things does contain, / As bright almost as were th'Ideas laid, / In the last model e'er the World was made."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1703

"When Souls are first to their close Rooms confin'd, / Nothing of their Celestial Make is seen, / Obscuring Earth does interpose between"

— Chudleigh [née Lee], Mary, Lady Chudleigh (bap. 1656, d. 1710)

Date: 1703

"The streiten'd Intellect immur'd does lie, / Shut up within a narrow place, / Till Nature does enlarge the Space, / And by degrees the Organs fit, / For those great Operations which are wrought by it."

— Chudleigh [née Lee], Mary, Lady Chudleigh (bap. 1656, d. 1710)