Date: 1817

"Nor should we pass the secret cell, / Where lonely Science loves to dwell, / Pleas'd, from its lamp, to cast the ray / That lights the mind's beclouded day."

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1890

"We noticed smallest things, / Things overlooked before, / By this great light upon our  minds / Italicized, as 't were."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"I found the phrase to every thought / I ever had, but one; / And that defies me,--as a hand / Did try to chalk the sun // To races nurtured in the dark."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"It's past set down before the soul, / And lighted with a match, / Perusal to facilitate / Of its condensed despatch."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind, / Thy windy will to bear!"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 2010

"A thought to mind, so to the string / plucked, or touched, or bowed, the music is, / a wrinkling of the air as immaterial / and brief as sunlight glancing on a wave."

— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)