Date: 1664

"I can only say in general, that the souls of other men shine out at little crannies; they understand some one thing, perhaps to admiration, while they are darkened on all the other parts: but your Lordship's soul is an entire globe of light, breaking out on every side; and if I have only discove...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: w. 1677, published October, 1682

"Some Beams of Wit on other souls may fall, / Strike through and make a lucid intervall; / But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, / His rising Fogs prevail upon the Day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul; and as on high, / Those rolling fires discover but the sky / Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray / Was lent not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"And as those nightly tapers disappear / When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere / So pale grows reason at religion's sight: / So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Then those who follow'd reason's dictates right; Liv'd up, and lifted high their natural light; / With Socrates may see their Maker's Face, / While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1685

"These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, / No rays of outward sunshine can dispel; / But nature and right reason must display / Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1692

"But when dilated organs let in day / To the young soul, and gave it room to play, / At his first aptness, the maternal love / Those rudiments of reason did improve."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1700, 1717

"He, tho' from Heav'n remote, to Heav'n cou'd move, / With Strength of Mind, and tread th' Abyss above; / And penetrate with his interior Light / Those upper Depths, which Nature hid from Sight"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)