Date: 1666

"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul; and as on high, / Those rolling fires discover but the sky / Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray / Was lent not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll, / Without a centre where to fix the soul."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1684

"My lady knows t' a tittle what there's in ye; / No passing your gilt shilling for a guinea."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1685

Eternal troubles may haunt an anxious mind

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1685

"These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, / No rays of outward sunshine can dispel; / But nature and right reason must display / Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1687

"But, when arrived at last to human race, / The Godhead took a deep considering space; / And, to distinguish man from all the rest, / Unlocked the sacred treasures of his breast; / And mercy mixt with reason did impart, / One to his head, the other to his heart; / Reason to rule, but mercy to f...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1692

"The tender age was pliant to command; / Like wax it yielded to the forming hand: / True to the artificer, the laboured mind / With ease was pious, generous, just, and kind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1693

"Those Senses lost, behold a new defeat; / The Soul, dislodging from another seat."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700) [Poem ascribed to]