Date: 1803

"And all the floating thoughts we find / Upon the surface of the mind."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1806

"Whan ardent youth, wi' boiling blood, / Ilk trace o'glowing passion loo'd."

— MacNeill, Hector (1746-1818)

Date: 1807-8

"[T]hrough the cells / And channels of his phrensy-stricken brain / Rage and confusion rush'd; the solemn peal / Broke on his ear like his salvation's knell, / Whilst his vext conscience struggled, but too late, / To rend th' insatiate demon from his heart"

— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)

Date: 1807-8

"So minds debas'd can torture gen'rous acts: / And thus, by terrors haunted, hunger-pinch'd, / Hag-ridden by the demon at their hearts, / Suspicious, tost from thought to thought, they watch'd / The lagging hours of night"

— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)

Date: 1814

"So when the breeze of life is felt / To ruffle, how those fancies melt; / And real woe,--ideal rest, / Flutter uncertain in the breast."

— Reynolds, John Hamilton (1796-1852)

Date: w. August 1814

"Fill for me a brimming bowl / *And let me in it drown my soul: */ But put therein some drug, designed */ To Banish Women from my mind."

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

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)

Date: 1816

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

— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)

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)

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)