Date: 1670

"Thus, like a captive in an isle confined, / Man walks at large, a prisoner of the mind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: January 16, 1717

"Madam, excuse this Absence of Mind; my animal Spirits had deserted the Avenues of my Senses, and retired to the Recesses of the Brain, to contemplate a beautiful Idea. I could not force the vagrant Creatures back again into their Posts, to move those Parts of the Body that express Civility."

— Gay, John (1685-1732); Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: 1724

"That fiery thought / Glows in my breast; and as I weigh my wrongs, / I swell like Ætna, when her sulph'rous rage / Bursts o'er the earth, and rolls in floods of fire."

— Savage, Richard (1697/8-1743)

Date: 1724

"When all at once / A thousand anxious Thoughts that slept by Day, / Swarm'd in my Brain, 'till it resembled Hell, / Hot, dark and hot: my sick Imagination, / Assisted by the Shades of Night, would give / A gloomy turn to each Idea there."

— Jeffreys, George (1678-1755)

Date: 1745

"Ha! my Brain / Is all on fire! a wild Abyss of Thought!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: February 2, 1796

"Her head's like the island, folks tell on, / Which nothing but monkies can dwell on"

— Hoare, Prince (1755-1834)

Date: 1820

"Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan / Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart / Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, / And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"To cheer thy state / I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits, / Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, / And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, / Its world-surrounding aether."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"On a poet's lips I slept / Dreaming like a love-adept / In the sound his breathing kept; / Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, / But feeds on the aëreal kisses / Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Only a sense / Remains of them, like the omnipotence / Of music, when the inspired voice and lute / Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, / Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, / Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)