Date: 1718

"Your Horace owns, He various writ, / As wild, or sober Maggots bit: / And, where too much the Poet ranted, / The Sage Philosopher recanted."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"But I can call to my Assistance / Proximity (mark that!) and Distance: / Can prove, that all Things, on Occasion, / Love Union, and desire Adhesion; / That Alma merely is a Scale; / And Motives, like the Weights, prevail."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"If neither Side turn down or up, / With Loss or Gain, with Fear or Hope; / The Balance always would hang ev'n, / Like Mah'met's Tomb, 'twixt Earth and Heav'n."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"My simple System shall suppose, / That Alma enters at the Toes; / That then She mounts by just Degrees / Up to the Ancles, Legs, and Knees: / Next, as the Sap of Life does rise, / She lends her Vigor to the Thighs: / And, all these under-Regions past,/ She nestles somewhere near the Waste."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"Alma, They strenuously maintain, / Sits Cock-horse on Her Throne, the Brain; / And from that Seat of Thought dispenses / Her Sov'reign Pleasure to the Senses."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1720

"Ah! Wissin, had thy Art been so refin'd, / As with their Beauty to have drawn their Mind."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1720

Justice, the "Queen of Virtues" may poize the mind in "equal balance" so that "All different Graces soon will enter, / Like Lines concurrent to their Center"

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. 1721 [published 1907]

"And if again, pray mind, Thy head and Mine / Are form'd and stuff'd quite diff'rent from each other; / *I n'er shal understand one single line,/ Thô I shou'd read thy Folio ten times over."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. 1721

"As running Streams their parted Waters spread / Adown the hill or thrô the flow'ry Mead* / Here rising bold and Turbulent in waves* / There sunk in Sand or sunk in Rocky Caves* / The human Eye may still collect and bring* / To their first Murmur and Original spring:* / So from the various...

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1723

"But turn the Tables and reflect, / All may not be, that you suspect: / By the Mind's Eye, the Horns, we mean, / Are only in Ideas seen, / 'Tis from the inside of the Head / Their Branches shoot, their Antlers spread; / Fruitful Suspicions often bear them, / You feel 'em from the Time you fear 'em."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)