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Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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Date: 1791, 1806

"Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

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Date: 1792

"But souls in common are a dreary waste, / By brambles, thistles, barb'rous docks disgrac'd; / That need the ploughshare, harrow, and the fire--"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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Date: 1797

"Light of the world, whose cheering ray / Illumes the realms of mind"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

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Date: 1812

The realms of mind are ruled by shades

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

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Date: 1814

"No single passion, and no ruling thought / That leaves the rest, as once, unseen, unsought, / But the wild prospect when the Soul reviews, / All rushing through their thousand avenues"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: w. 1798-1800, 1814

"Not Chaos, not / The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, / Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out / By help of dreams--can breed such fear and awe / As fall upon us often when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-- / My haunt, and the main region of my song."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

One may try "Conjecture's trackless region round, / To judge what phantasms Fancy might have found-- / What Game the glances of her Hawks might trace, / Or Greyhounds view in visionary chace"

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

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Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

Ideas are "like the silent Snows, by Winter spread, / In silvery treasures, o'er the mountain's head; / Whose stores, while undisturb'd, each hour decay, / And hue, form, substance, quickly waste away; / But stirr'd, by winds, like words, with action strong, /Each sphere enlarges as it rolls alon...

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.