Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"From heaven my strains begin; from heaven descends / The flame of genius to the human breast, / And love and beauty, and poetic joy / And inspiration."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Else wherefore burns / In mortal bosoms this unquenched hope, / That breathes from day to day sublimer things, / And mocks possession?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Inspire my kindling bosom to the height / Of this untempted theme."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"The flame of passion, through the struggling soul / Deep-kindled, shows across that sudden blaze / The object of its rapture, vast of size, / With fiercer colours and a night of shade."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"That name indeed / Becomes the rosy breath of love; becomes / The radiant smiles of joy, the applauding hand / Of admiration: but the bitter shower / That sorrow sheds upon a brother's grave, / But the dumb palsy of nocturnal fear, / Or those consuming fires that gnaw the heart / Of panting indi...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1746

"Social friends, / Attuned to happy unison of soul; / To whose exalting eye a fairer world, / Of which the vulgar never had a glimpse, / Displays its charms; whose minds are richly fraught / With philosophic stores, superior light; / And in whose breast, enthusiastic, burns / Virtue, the sons of ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1816

"Yet must I think less wildly:--I have thought / Too long and darkly, till my brain became, / In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, / A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame."

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

Date: 1816

"[Y]ears steal / Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb."

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

Date: 1816

"[T]here is a fire / And motion of the Soul which will not dwell / In its own narrow being, but aspire / Beyond the fitting medium of desire; / And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore."

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

Date: 1823

"'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, / Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article."

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