Date: 1653

"Sad melancholy Thoughts are for Shadowes plac'd, / By which the lighter Fancies are more grac'd."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1653

"Thoughts are for Shadowes plac'd, / By which the lighter Fancies are more graced. / As through a dark, and watry Cloud, more bright, / The Sun breakes forth with his Resplendent Light. / Or like to Night's black Mantle, where each Star / Doth clearer seem, so lighter Fancies are."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1653

"Some like to Rain-bowes various Colours shew, / So round the Braine Fantastick Fancies grow."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1660, 1676

"Conscience is the brightness and splendor of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine Majesty, and the Image of the goodness of God."

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)

Date: 1664

"I can only say in general, that the souls of other men shine out at little crannies; they understand some one thing, perhaps to admiration, while they are darkened on all the other parts: but your Lordship's soul is an entire globe of light, breaking out on every side; and if I have only discove...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1667

"We stifle our own Sun, and live in Shade; / But where its beams do once appear, / They make that person of himself afraid, / And to his own acts most severe."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1677

"He hath a Lamp, but that Lamp hath no Oyl. / He hath a Soul, but what doth that embrace?"

— Speed, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. 1679?)

Date: w. 1677, published October, 1682

"Some Beams of Wit on other souls may fall, / Strike through and make a lucid intervall; / But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, / His rising Fogs prevail upon the Day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul; and as on high, / Those rolling fires discover but the sky / Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray / Was lent not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"And as those nightly tapers disappear / When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere / So pale grows reason at religion's sight: / So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)