Date: 1892

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all, // And sweetest in the gale is heard."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: December, 1917

"I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds."

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)

Date: 1936

"Lids closed, the eyes are watchful; the brain / carefully stalks the thought like a tiger / following the accurately-scented prey / through tangled jungle foliage."

— Edwin Rolfe (1909-1954)

Date: 1986

"But it was only the heart's / racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want // until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke / of my body by the last margin of land where the river // mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens, / a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as // bar...

— Hull, Lynda (1954-1994)

Date: 1988

"Mind in its purest play is like some bat / That beats about in caverns all alone, / Contriving by a kind of senseless wit / Not to conclude against a wall of stone."

— Wilbur, Richard (1921- )

Date: 1988

"The mind is like a bat."

— Wilbur, Richard (1921- )

Date: 2002

"Spiders swing through my heart."

— Wright, Charles (b. 1935)

Date: 2003

"How to hold it all at once, / except by passion's climb, / its rising tides & breathless, / hawk's-eye view?"

— Spaar, Lisa Russ

Date: 2008

"Oh Bryn, you see through the dark, / Right past the fireflies that sleep in my heart."

— Koenig, Ezra (b. 1984) [Vampire Weekend]

Date: December 2009

"Like an oyster / That cloisters a spoil of pearls, / Untouched— // The heart that’s had / Enough / Stays shut."

— Essbaum, Jill Alexander