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...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1711
"The scorcht and pathless Desarts of the Brain, / Want proper Caves and Cells to entertain / A Crowd of airy Forms and long Ideal Train."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"She [the mind] draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain, / Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train, / Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare, / Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1718
"Whilst, as my System says, the Mind / Is to these upper Rooms confin'd."
preview | full record— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)
Date: 1723
"The Cells, and little Lodgings, Thou canst see / In Mem'ry's Hoards and secret Treasury; / Dost the dark Cave of each Idea spy, / And see'st how rang'd the crouded Lodgers lye; / How some, when beckon'd by the Soul, awake, / While peaceful Rest their uncall'd Neighbours take."
preview | full record— 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...
preview | full record— Needler, Henry (1690-1718); Duncombe, William (1690-1769)
Date: 1725-6
"[T]he body it self was suppos'd to be the infernal receptacle of the Soul, into which she descended as into a prison, from above; this was thought the sepulchre of the Soul, and the cave of Pluto"
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), Broome, W. and Fenton, E.
Date: 1734
"If I but close my eyes, strange images / In thousand forms and thousand colours rise, / Stars, rainbows, moons, green dragons, bears and ghosts, / An endless medley rush upon the stage, / And dance and riot wild in reason's court / Above control."
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1735
"That Thought romantic Memory detains / In unknown cells and in aereal chains; / Imagination thence her flow'rs translates, / And Fancy emulous of God, creates."
preview | full record— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)
Date: 1742
"Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire; / In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar / Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust; / Dismounted every great and glorious aim; / Embruted every faculty divine; / Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)