Date: 1590?, 1623

"O thou that dost inhabit in my breast , / Leave not the mansion so long tenantless / Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall / And leave no memory of what it was."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1590?, 1623

"My herald thought s in thy pure bosom rest them"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1597

"That our swift-wingèd souls may catch the King's, / Or like obedient subjects follow him / To his new kingdom of ne'er-changing night."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1597

"My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne, / And all this day an unaccustomed spirit / Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1597

"My brain I'll prove the female to my soul, / My soul the father, and these two beget / A generation of still-breeding thoughts; / And these same thoughts people this little world / In humours like the people of this world."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"My heart to her but as guestwise sojourned / And now to Helen is it home returned, / There to remain."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1664

"[B]ut when the difficulty of artful rhyming is interposed, where the poet commonly confines his sense to his couplet, and must contrive that sense into such words, that the rhyme, shall naturally follow them, not they the rhyme; the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which seei...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1671

"In good faith this thought was no stranger to my imagination."

— Shadwell, Thomas (1642-1692)

Date: 1675

"Please to consult the Steward of your Soul, / And Ruler of your Senses, Your wise Reason."

— Anonymous; Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1675

"Those things are mean, are forc'd to court the Eyes, The Porters of the Soul, to give 'em entrance."

— Fane, Sir Francis (d. 1691)