Date: 1743

"Darkness has more divinity for me: / It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul / To settle on herself, our point supreme! / There lies our theatre; there sits our judge."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene; / 'Tis the kind hand of Providence stretch'd out / 'Twixt man and vanity; 'tis Reason's reign, / And Virtue's too; these tutelary shades / Are man's asylum from the tainted throng."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Nor is it strange; light, motion, concourse, noise, / All scatter us abroad; Thought, outward-bound, / Neglectful of our home-affairs, flies off / In fume and dissipation, quits her charge, / And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Night is fair Virtue's immemorial friend; / The conscious Moon, through every distant age,/ Has held a lamp to Wisdom, and let fall / On Contemplation's eye her purging ray."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"All the live-long night, / Rigid in thought, and motionless, he stands; / Nor quits his theme or posture till the sun / (Rude drunkard! rising rosy from the main) / Disturbs his nobler intellectual beam, / And gives him to the tumult of the world."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"The world excluded, every passion hush'd, / And open'd a calm intercourse with Heaven, / Here the soul sits in council; ponders past, / Predestines future action; sees, not feels, / Tumultuous life, and reasons with the storm; / All her lies answers, and thinks down her charms."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"What awful joy! what mental liberty!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Thought borrows light elsewhere; from that first fire, / Fountain of animation, whence descends / Urania, my celestial guest!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Conscious how needful discipline to man, / From pleasing dalliance with the charms of Night, / My wandering thought recalls, to what excites / Far other beat of heart,-- Narcissa 's tomb!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Dearly pays the soul / For lodging ill; too dearly rents her clay."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)