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."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1687

"But, when arrived at last to human race, / The Godhead took a deep considering space; / And, to distinguish man from all the rest, / Unlocked the sacred treasures of his breast; / And mercy mixt with reason did impart, / One to his head, the other to his heart; / Reason to rule, but mercy to f...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1692

"The tender age was pliant to command; / Like wax it yielded to the forming hand: / True to the artificer, the laboured mind / With ease was pious, generous, just, and kind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1693

"But let us for the Gods a Gift prepare, / Which the Great Man's Great Chargers cannot bear / Soul, where Laws both Humane and Divine, / In Practice more than Speculation shine: / A genuine Virtue, of a vigorous kind, / Pure in the last recesses of the Mind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1693

"Yet, thy moist Clay is pliant to Command; / Unwrought, and easie to the Potter's hand: / Now take the Mold; now bend thy Mind to feel / The first sharp Motions of the Forming Wheel."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1693

"Thy Chaps are fallen, and thy Frame dis-joyn'd: / Thy Body as dissolv'd as is thy Mind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1700

"He blinds the wise, gives eyesight to the blind, / And moulds and stamps anew the lover's mind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1700, 1717

"And, as the soften'd Wax new Seals receives, / This Face assumes, and that Impression leaves; / Now call'd by one, now by another Name; / The Form is only chang'd, the Wax is still the same."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)