Date: 1850
"Behold an emblem of our human mind / Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home, / Yet, like to eddying balls of foam / Within this whirlpool, they each other chase / Round and round, and neither find / An outlet nor a resting-place!"
preview | full record— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
Date: 1850
"No familiar shapes / Remained, no pleasant images of trees, / Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields; / But huge and mighty forms, that do not live / Like living men, moved slowly through the mind / By day, and were a trouble to my dreams."
preview | full record— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
Date: 1852
"Alas! is even love too weak / To unlock the heart, and let it speak?"
preview | full record— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)
Date: 1852
"Ah! well for us, if even we, / Even for a moment, can get free / Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd; / For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!"
preview | full record— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)
Date: 1852
"Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, / From the soul's subterranean depth upborne / As from an infinitely distant land, / Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey / A melancholy into all our day."
preview | full record— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)
Date: 1852
"A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, / And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again."
preview | full record— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)
Date: 1854
A priest can "secretly impress / On the soft wax of Woman's yielded mind / Each vile impression, which a Jesuit loves"
preview | full record— Montgomery, Robert (1807-1855)
Date: 1855
"Far from the springtide gale, and joyous day, / In the deep caverns of Despair ye lay"
preview | full record— Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850)
Date: 1859
" Not all this world's gay hopes, nor present charms, / Nor parents tears, nor a fond husband's arms, / Could stamp the least impression on her mind, / Or fix to earth a soul for heav'n design'd."
preview | full record— Skinner, Rev. John (1721-1807)
Date: 1865
"Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul, / With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird, / There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim."
preview | full record— Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)