Date: 1691

"If thro the Eye the Vigorous Object darts / Into the Brain these small Aerial Parts; / How are they entertain'd, when Crowds do come? / How do the little narrow Cells make room? / Do all, that to an Object do belong, / Into one Place unmixt with others throng?"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1695

Active spirits fly "To the round Palace of th' Immortal Soul, / And thro' the Rooms and dark Apartments roll."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1700, 1717

"Thus all Things are but alter'd, nothing dies; / And here and there th' unbodied Spirit flies, / By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossess, / And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast; / Or hunts without, till ready Limbs it find, / And actuates those according to their kind; / From Tenement ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1712

"The ready Phantomes at her Nod advance, / And form the busie Intellectual Dance: / While her fair Scenes to vary, or supply, / She singles out fit Images, that lye / In Memory's Records, which faithful hold / Objects immense in secret Marks inroll'd, / The sleeping Forms at her Command awake, / ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1724

"For Nature by fix'd Laws has wisely join'd / The bright Ideas of the conscious Mind / To Motions of the liquid spirit'ous Train, / Thro' previous Traces of the humid Brain; / These, when the Soul by drowsy Sleep oppress'd / Into her private Cell retires to Rest, / Thro' beaten Paths their wand'r...

— Needler, Henry (1690-1718); Duncombe, William (1690-1769)

Date: 1743

"Darkness has more divinity for me: / It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul / To settle on herself, our point supreme! / There lies our theatre; there sits our judge."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"For to the brutes / Perception and the transient boons of sense / Hath fate imparted: but to man alone / Of sublunary beings was it given / Each fleeting impulse on the sensual powers / At leisure to review; with equal eye / To scan the passion of the stricken nerve / Or the vague object strikin...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1761, 1790

"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

Date: 1755, 1771

"For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul / Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal; / Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame, / The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame, / Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye / A glance, an image, of a future sky."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)