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Date: 1838

"I to the ocean gave / My mind, and thoughts as restless as the wave"

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

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Date: w. 1821, 1840

"It is as it were the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1841

"As certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped in their dimensions, will ferment, and fret, and chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual essence or soul of Mr. Tappertit would sometimes fume within that precious cask, his body, until, with great foam and froth and splutter, it would forc...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

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Date: 1848

A sword's point may be dipped in "the gloomy current of a traitor's heart"

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

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Date: 1850

"This faculty [Imagination/Reason] hath been the feeding source / Of our long labour: we have traced the stream / From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard /Its natal murmur; followed it to light / And open day"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1850

"Who that shall point as with a wand and say / 'This portion of the river of my mind / Came from yon fountain?'"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1850

"I could behold / The antechapel where the statue stood / Of Newton with his prism and silent face, / The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1850

"Finally, whate'er / I saw, or heard, or felt, was but a stream / That flowed into a kindred stream; a gale, / Confederate with the current of the soul, / To speed my voyage."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1850

"Caught by the spectacle my mind turned round / As with the might of waters."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1850

"Behold an emblem of our human mind / Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home, / Yet, like to eddying balls of foam / Within this whirlpool, they each other chase / Round and round, and neither find / An outlet nor a resting-place!"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.