Date: 1682
"'Tis not a Flash of Fancy which sometimes / Dasling our Minds, sets off the slightest Rimes; / Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done; / True Wit is everlasting, like the Sun; / Which though sometimes beneath a cloud retir'd, / Breaks out again, and is by all admir'd."
preview | full record— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)
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 ...
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
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...
preview | full record— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)
Date: 1689
"In vain they strive your glorious Lamp to hide / In that dark Lanthorn to all noble minds, / Which, through the smallest cranny is descry'd, / Whose force united no resistance finds"
preview | full record— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)
Date: 1691
"The Sense deceivs us, and like Painted Glass / Tinges all Objects, that do thrô it pass."
preview | full record— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)
Date: 1692
"We Truth by a Refracted ray / View, like the Sun at Ebb of day: / Whom the gross, treacherous Atmosphere / Makes where it is not, to appear."
preview | full record— Norris, John (1657-1712)
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."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)