Date: 1687
"This Heart of mine, now wreck'd upon despair, / Was once as free and careless as the Air; / In th' early Morning of my tender years, / E're I was sensible of Hopes and Fears, / It floated in a Sea of Mirth and Ease, / And thought the World was only made to please; / No adverse Wind had ever stop...
preview | full record— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)
Date: 1689
"In vain they strive your glorious Lamp to hide / In that dark Lanthorn to all noble minds, / Which, through the smallest cranny is descry'd, / Whose force united no resistance finds"
preview | full record— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)
Date: 1691
"She was the paragon of Perfection, and Loadstar of all Eyes and Hearts; and well might my Dear Father Travel seven years after her Death, before he Marryed agen, for had he don't, not seven, nor seventeen, nor seventy, but seven hundred, he'd ne're have lit upon such another."
preview | full record— Dunton, John (1659–1732)
Date: 1691
"No--my purest pure had such a Soul, it shin'd through her Body, and such a Body, you might see her Soul through't. Which some may think much at one, but however there's a differeut conception in't, and it makes one line more to fill out the Book."
preview | full record— Dunton, John (1659–1732)
Date: 1697
"But he Employ'd to set their Judgments right, / No Force but Reason's mild but powerful Light."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1697
"Oh, let no groundless Prejudice oppose / The Light, that from so pure a Fountain flows. / May these kind Beams dispel the Clouds, and find / An unobstructed Passage to your Mind."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1697
"Then climbs the Mind to the first glorious Cause, / And his bright Image by this Model draws. / Freedom of Choice, pure Intellectual Light, / Power Independent, Goodness Infinite, / To form the great Idea we unite."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1698
"All Divine Truth is of one of these two Emanations:--Either it flows from God, in the first Instant and Moment of God's Creation; and then it is the Light of that Candle which God set up in Man, to light him; and that which by this Light he may discover, are all the Instances of Morality; of goo...
preview | full record— Whichcote, Benjamin (1609-1683)
Date: 1699
"Our Understanding they [the passions] with darkness fill, / Cause strange Conceptions, and pervert the Will."
preview | full record— Pomfret, John (1667-1702)
Date: 1699
"Reason's a Taper, which but faintly burns: / A Languid Flame that glows and dies by turns: / We see't a while, and but a little way / We travel by its Light, as Men by Day; / But quickly dying, it forsakes us soon; / Like Morning Stars that never stay till Noon."
preview | full record— Pomfret, John (1667-1702)