Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"From such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears / And stops my tongue, while heart is drowned in cares"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"Look on the boy; / And let his manly face, which promiseth / Successful fortune, steel thy melting heart / To hold thine own and leave thine own with him."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594

"Wound it [the heart] with sighing, girl; kill it with groans, / Or get some little knife between thy teeth / And just against thy heart make thou a hole, / That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall / May run into that sink and, soaking in, / Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1597

"So in the Lethe of thy angry soul / Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs, / Which thou supposest I have done to thee."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

A people may be "muddied, / Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers / For good Polonius' death."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, / And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1680

"'Tis an Error as groundless as Vulgar, to think that there goes no more to the furnishing a Poet, than a Wind-mill in the Head, a Stream of Tattle, and convenient Confidence; whereas no Exercise of the Soul requires a more compos'd Thought, more sparingness of Words, more Modesty and Caution in ...

— Tate, Nahum (c. 1652-1715)

Date: 1701

"So when against the Tide the Sailor toils / to force his loaded Bark, the Current foils / His Pains, down Stream the master'd Vessel's drove"

— Sherburne, Sir Edward (bap. 1616, d. 1702)

Date: 1702

"The boiling Passion that disturbs thy Soul, / Spreads Clouds around, and make thy purpose dark."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1702

"Love, Sorrow, and the Sting of vile Reproach, / Succeeding one another in their Course, / Like Drops of Eating Water on the Marble, / At length have worn my boasted Courage down."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)