Date: 1805

"Your Worth and Talents will unfold, / Richer than Needlework of Gold; / The native treasures of the soul, / True--as the Needle to the Pole."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1805

"And the gay vein of sportive Sense / Enrich'd by sterling Innocence; / Th'undrossy treasures of the Mind / Good-humour'd, graceful, and refin'd; / And, rivalling the Seers of old, / Whate'er you touch transmutes to Gold."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1807-8

"Thus with the show of reason, but with hearts, / By faction tainted, and by envy steel'd / Against their youthful leader, they had hop'd / By these inglorious councils to degrade / And tarnish his high fame."

— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)

Date: 1817

"But he, the bard of every age and clime, / Of genius fruitful, ardent and sublime, / Who, from the glowing mint of fancy, pours / No spurious metal, fused from common ores, / But gold, to matchless purity refined, / And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind."

— Gifford, William (1756-1826)

Date: 1823

The "venom'd shafts" of Cupid "empoison mortal joy," "Drawing from heav'n the soul of man to earth, / With foul alloy debasing purest treasure."

— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"It is as it were the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1890

"I've known her from an ample nation / Choose one; / Then close the valves of her attention / Like stone."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"Least village boasts its blacksmith, / Whose anvil's even din / Stands symbol for the finer forge / That soundless tugs within, // Refining these impatient ores / With hammer and with blaze, / Until the designated light / Repudiate the forge."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1902

"If it were otherwise, no one could even set down on paper a closely reasoned argument, for the attention would be skipping like a stone hurrying down a sharp incline, or it would be moving hither and thither like a helpless shuttlecock at the mercy of eager players."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1911

"I shall here have to change my metaphor a little to get the process in his mind. Suppose that instead of your curved pieces of wood you have a springy piece of steel of the same types of curvature as the wood. Now the state of tension or concentration of mind, if he is doing anything really good...

— Hulme, T. E. (1883-1917)