Date: 1660
"Things that the least of drossy mixture hold, / Last longest; my Hearts flames Ætherial be, / More pure than seven times refined Gold / Than Cedar's flames: rays of a Deitie / They are."
preview | full record— Pordage, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. c. 1691)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"But though we have, here and there, a little of this clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge; yet the greatest part of our ideas are such, that we cannot discern their agreement or disagreement by an immediate comparing them."
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691
"I burn and am consumed with hopeless Love; those Beams in whose soft temperate warmth I wanton'd heretofore, now flash destruction to my Soul, my Treacherous greedy Eyes have suck'd the glaring Light, they have united all its Rays, and, like a burning-Glass, Convey'd the pointed Meteor to-my Hea...
preview | full record— Congreve, William (1670-1729)
Date: 1700, 1702
"What is the Soul of Man but Light, / Drawn down from thy transcendant height? / What but an Intellectual Beam? / A Spark of thy immortal Flame?"
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: 1700, 1702
"And all fires those that lighted up my Soul / Glory and bright Ambition languish now, / And leave me dark and gloomy as the Grave."
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: November 25, 1707; 1708
"Since the same Flame, by different Ways express'd, / Glows in the Heroe's and the Poet's Breast."
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: 1712
"Strong as the Winds, and sprightly as the Light? / She [the mind] moves unweary'd, as the active Fire, / And, like the Flame, her Flights to Heav'n aspire."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1713
Thus o'er the dying Lamp th'unsteady Flame / Hang's quiv'ring on a Point, leap's off by Fits, / And fall's again, as loath to quit its Hold / --Thou must not go, my Soul still hover's o'er thee / And can't get loose."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: 1713
"I've been surprized in an unguarded Hour, / But must not now go back: The Love, that lay / Half smother'd in my Breast, has broke through all / Its weak Restraints, and burn's in its full Lustre, / I cannot, if I wou'd, conceal it from thee."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: 1745
"All these Pleasures of his Breast should die, / The Beams of Science from his Soul retire / And fade, extinguish'd by a nobler Fire, / As kindled Wood, howe'er its Flames may rise, / When the bright Sun appears, in Embers dies."
preview | full record— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)