Date: 1709, 1810
"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1712
"These Out-guards of the Mind are sent abroad, / And still patrolling beat the neighb'ring Road: / Or to the Parts remote obedient fly, / Keep Posts advanc'd, and on the Frontier lye."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"But other Spirits govern'd by the Will / Shoot thro' their Tracks, and distant Muscles fill. / This Sov'raign by his arbitrary Nod / Restrains, or sends his Ministers abroad."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"O'er Ministerial Senses [the soul] does preside, / To all their various Provinces divide, / Each Member move, and ev'ry Motion guide."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1718
"My simple System shall suppose, / That Alma enters at the Toes; / That then She mounts by just Degrees / Up to the Ancles, Legs, and Knees: / Next, as the Sap of Life does rise, / She lends her Vigor to the Thighs: / And, all these under-Regions past,/ She nestles somewhere near the Waste."
preview | full record— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)
Date: 1736, 1737, 1759, 1744, 1771, 1773
"Female youth, left to weak woman's care" are "Strangers to reason and reflection made, / Left to their passions, and by them betrayed; / Untaught the noble end of glorious truth, / Bred to deceive even from earliest youth; / Unused to books, nor virtue taught to prize; / Whose mind, a savage was...
preview | full record— Ingram, Anne [née Howard; other married name Douglas], Viscountess Irwin (c. 1696-1764)
Date: 1741
"I [the mind] did but step out, on some weighty affairs, / To visit last night, my good friends in the stars, / When, before I was got half as high as the moon, / You despatched Pain and Languor to hurry me down; / Vi & Armis they seized me, in midst of my flight, / And shut me in caverns as dark...
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1742
"While o'er my limbs Sleep's soft dominion spread, / What though my soul fantastic measures trod / O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom / Of pathless woods; or, down the craggy steep / Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool; / Or scaled the cliff; or danced on hollow winds, / W...
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)