Date: 1867

"This book by any yet unread, / I leave for you when I am dead, / That being gone, here you may find / What was your living mother's mind."

— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)

Date: 1890

"We noticed smallest things, / Things overlooked before, / By this great light upon our  minds / Italicized, as 't were."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1912

"Who does not harbor in his breast / The fruitage of forbidden things / Culled from beauty's lips and heart, / And folded in between the leaves / Of memory's roll of reveries."

— Beadle, Samuel Alfred (1857-1932)

Date: 1946

"The State had reasons: on the whole, / It acted out of kindness when it locked / Its servants in this place and had him watched / Until an ordered darkness left his soul / A tabula rasa"

— Lowell, Robert (1917-1977)

Date: 1990

"The soul too / is a debasement / of a text, but, thus, it / acquires salience, although a / human salience, but / inimitable, and, hence, memorable."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)