Date: 1687

"This Heart of mine, now wreck'd upon despair, / Was once as free and careless as the Air; / In th' early Morning of my tender years, / E're I was sensible of Hopes and Fears, / It floated in a Sea of Mirth and Ease, / And thought the World was only made to please; / No adverse Wind had ever stop...

— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)

Date: 1691

"Thirdly, Let us hence duly learn to prize and value our Souls; is the Body such a rare Piece, what this is the Soul? the Body is but the Husk or Shell, the Soul is the Kernel; the Body is but the Cask, the Soul the precious Liquor contained in it; the Body is but the Cabinet; the Soul the Jewel;...

— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627–1705)

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"Her Eyes diffus'd Rays comfortable as warmth, and piercing as the light; they would have worked a passage through the straightest Pores, and with a delicious heat, have play'd about the most obdurate frozen Heart, untill 'twere melted down to Love."

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

Date: 1701, 1704

"The application of our Thoughts to other Subjects is like looking upon the Rays of the Sun as it shines to us from a Wall, or upon the Image of it as it returns from a Watry Mirrour, but this is looking up directly against the Fons veri lucidus, the bright Source of Intellectual Light a...

— Norris, John (1657-1712)

Date: 1702

"My Heart beats higher, and my nimble Spirits / Ride swiftly thro' their purple Channels round: / 'Tis the last blaze of Life: Nature revives / Like a dim, winking Lamp, that flashes brightly / With parting Light, and strait is dark for ever."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"As on the land while here the Ocean gains, / In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; / Thus in the soul while memory prevails, / The solid pow'r of understanding fails; / Where beams of warm imagination play, / The memory's soft figures melt away."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1726, 1753

"As fire, by nature, climbs direct, and bright, / And beams, in spotless rays, a shining light; / But if some gross obstruction stops its way, / Smokes in low curls, and scents the sullied day: / So love, itself, untainted, and refin'd, / Borrows a tincture, from the colour'd mind."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1731

"Secondly, Neither doth every Involuntary Phantasm, or such as the Soul is not Conscious to it self to have purposely excited or raised up within it self, seem to be a Sensation or Perception of a thing, as existing without us; for there may be Straggling Phantasms, which come into the Mind we kn...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"So if the Knowledge of Corporeal Things were but a Secondary and Derivative Result from Sense, (though it cannot be conceived that the Passion of Sense should ray upon the Intellect, so as to beget a Secondary Passion there, any more than one Shadow should cast another) then Knowledge would be m...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1743

"Thought borrows light elsewhere; from that first fire, / Fountain of animation, whence descends / Urania, my celestial guest!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)