Date: 1681

"In Pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace. / A fiery Soul, which working out its way, / Fretted the Pigmy-Body to decay; / And o'r inform'd the Tenement of Clay."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1681

"And all to leave, what with his Toyl he won, / To that unfeather'd, two legg'd thing, a Son: / Got, while his Soul did hudled Notions try; / And born a shapeless Lump, like Anarchy."

— 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

"And as those nightly tapers disappear / When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere / So pale grows reason at religion's sight: / So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led / From cause to cause, to Nature's secret head."

— 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: November, 1682

"Heav'n's early care prescrib'd for every age; / First, in the soul, and after, in the page."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"They, who the written rule had never known, / Were to themselves both rule and law alone: / To nature's plain indictment they shall plead; / And, by their conscience, be condemn'd or freed."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Then those who follow'd reason's dictates right; Liv'd up, and lifted high their natural light; / With Socrates may see their Maker's Face, / While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)