Date: March 12, 1673

"I'le keep my Soul free as the Bird that flyes i'th Aire, / I'le ne'r love one, till I of all besides Despair."

— Ravenscroft, Edward (c.1650- c.1700)

Date: 1674, 1686

"For Fancy's like a rough, but ready Horse, / Whose mouth is govern'd more by skill than force; / Wherein (my Friend) you do a Maistry own, / If not particular to you alone; /Yet such at least as to all eyes declares /Your Pegasus the best performs his Ayres."

— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)

Date: 1676

"Sorrow and remorse gnaw [the] soul"

— Etherege, Sir George (1636-1691/2)

Date: 1677

"Or else unto those Birds (aspiring) rare, / The Soul contemplative I may compare, / Of whom King David worthily attests, / That by the Holy Altar build their Nests: / So Meditation's said in holy Story, / To build her Nest about the Throne of Glory."

— Speed, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. 1679?)

Date: 1678

"A Weak mind complains before it is overtaken with evil, and as Birds are affrighted with the noise of the Sling, so the infirm soul anticipates its troubles by its own fearful apprehensions, and falls under them before they are yet arrived."

— Wanley, Nathaniel (1634-1680)

Date: 1670, rev. 1678

"To chew the cud upon a thing ... To consider of a thing, to revolve it in one's mind: to ruminate, which is the name of this action, is used in the same sense both in Latin and English."

— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627-1705)

Date: 1678

"I left off to watch, and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the light of the Word, and the goodness of God."

— Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)

Date: 1678

"This conceit would loosen the reines of our lust, and tollerate us to live as we list."

— Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)

Date: 1678

"But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind, / [the soul] Works all her folly up, and casts it outward / To the world's open view"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1681

"Here at the fountain's sliding foot, / Or at some fruit tree's mossy root, / Casting the body's vest aside, / My soul into the boughs does glide; / There like a bird it sits and sings, / Then whets, and combs its silver wings; / And, till prepar'd for longer flight, / Waves in its plumes the var...

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)