Date: 1820

"Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim, / Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, / Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, / As light in the sun, throned."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Ah woe! / Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever! / I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear / Thy works within my woe-illumèd mind, / Thou subtle tyrant!"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1821

"I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; / Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, / The soul of Adonais, like a star, / Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1821

"A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight / Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when / It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light / Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1822

"He rose / Disturbed and frowning, for tumultuous thoughts / Crowded like night upon his heart"

— Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850)

Date: 1823

"This was the thought--the sentiment--the bright solitary star of your lives,--ye mild and happy pair--which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your station!"

— Lamb, Charles (1775-1834)

Date: 1825

"Yet still to humble hope enough is given / Of light from reason's lamp, and light from heaven, / To teach us what to follow, what to shun, / To bow the head and say "Thy will be done!"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1830

"But mind is not merely this abstractly simple being equivalent to light, which was how it was considered when the simplicity of the soul in contrast to the composite nature of the body was under discussion."

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)