Date: 1660

"Things that the least of drossy mixture hold, / Last longest; my Hearts flames Ætherial be, / More pure than seven times refined Gold / Than Cedar's flames: rays of a Deitie / They are."

— Pordage, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. c. 1691)

Date: 1667

"Christ the mind fills / With light in us, a tender heart he places; / And files off the Rebellion of our Wills."

— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)

Date: 1667

"We stifle our own Sun, and live in Shade; / But where its beams do once appear, / They make that person of himself afraid, / And to his own acts most severe."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"So much the rather thou, celestial Light, / Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers / Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence / Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1675

"Well, since that thou dost thus desire to know / What I do Judge this Light within will do; / To satisfie thee I will make no doubt: / Man by this Light may find a God-head out."

— Keach, Benjamin (1640-1704)

Date: 1677

"He hath a Lamp, but that Lamp hath no Oyl. / He hath a Soul, but what doth that embrace?"

— Speed, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. 1679?)

Date: w. 1677, published October, 1682

"Some Beams of Wit on other souls may fall, / Strike through and make a lucid intervall; / But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, / His rising Fogs prevail upon the Day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1680

"Bright Reason's ray, / By damp of Wine, within this Hemisphere, / Was quench'd before: and now dim sense, to stay, / Must not expect, long after Her."

— Darby, Charles (bap. 1635, d.1709)

Date: 1682

"'Tis not a Flash of Fancy which sometimes / Dasling our Minds, sets off the slightest Rimes; / Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done; / True Wit is everlasting, like the Sun; / Which though sometimes beneath a cloud retir'd, / Breaks out again, and is by all admir'd."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

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)