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Date: 1792

"Ah me! the passion that my soul misled / Was check'd, not conquer'd; buried, but not dead: / Now bursting from the grave, in evil hour, / It hastens to its prey with fiercer pow'r, / And, vulture-like, with appetite increas'd / It riots on the undiminish'd feast."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

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Date: 1796

"Discordant tho' the ideas be, / In Fancy's logic they agree; / As in the Ark by special grace, / Mice liv'd with Cats, yet throve apace."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

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Date: 1804, 1807

"Their souls shall reach the Sabbath of the skies;-- / As birds, from bleak Norwegia's wintry coast / Blown out to sea, strive to regain the shore, / But, vainly striving; yield them to the blast,-- / Swept o'er the deep to Albion's genial isle, / Amazed they light amid the bloomy sprays / Of som...

— Graham, James (1765-1811)

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Date: 1805?

Holding council in the breast is like the "regal bee" consulting before calling forth the "warlike train" "from their waxen cells"

— Thelwall, John (1764-1834)

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Date: 1892

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all, // And sweetest in the gale is heard."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

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Date: 1965

"The ripe brain rotting like a yellow nut / Hatching / Its babel of sea-lice, sandfly, and maggot."

— Walcott, Derek (b. 1930)

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Date: 1988

"Mind in its purest play is like some bat / That beats about in caverns all alone, / Contriving by a kind of senseless wit / Not to conclude against a wall of stone."

— Wilbur, Richard (1921- )

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Date: 1988

"The mind is like a bat."

— Wilbur, Richard (1921- )

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Date: December 2009

"Like an oyster / That cloisters a spoil of pearls, / Untouched— // The heart that’s had / Enough / Stays shut."

— Essbaum, Jill Alexander

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.