Date: 1653

"Sad melancholy Thoughts are for Shadowes plac'd, / By which the lighter Fancies are more grac'd."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1653

"Thoughts are for Shadowes plac'd, / By which the lighter Fancies are more graced. / As through a dark, and watry Cloud, more bright, / The Sun breakes forth with his Resplendent Light. / Or like to Night's black Mantle, where each Star / Doth clearer seem, so lighter Fancies are."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1653

"Some like to Rain-bowes various Colours shew, / So round the Braine Fantastick Fancies grow."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

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

"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: 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: 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: 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

"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)