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Date: 1815

The wavering motions of the mind are like "quivering light" reflected off a confined "crystal flood" in a brass cistern

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1816

"[T]ort'ring pangs" and inexplicable woe may "like a torrent" overwhelm the soul

— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)

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Date: 1816

"Yet must I think less wildly:--I have thought / Too long and darkly, till my brain became, / In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, / A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: 1816

"Nor is it discontent to keep the mind / Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil / In the hot throng, where we become the spoil / Of our infection"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: 1817, 1818

There is "One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave / Whose calm reflects all moving things that are"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1817, 1818

"With ever-changing notes it floats along, / Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep / A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1818

"O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, / That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind "

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

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Date: 1818

"A scowl is sometimes on his brow, but who / Look full upon it feel anon the blue / Of his fair eyes run liquid through their souls."

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

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Date: 1818

"The lake unruffled [i.e., the mind], will reflect / A picture fair of earth and skies; / But how distorted its effect, / When ripples o'er the surface rise."

— Park, Thomas (1759-1834)

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Date: 1819

"'I sought the town, and to the ocean gave / 'My mind and thoughts, as restless as the wave"

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.