Date: 1851

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1854

"Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1855, 1856

"As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cat's-paw--an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed--as this ghostly cat's-paw came fanning his cheek, his glance fell upon the row of small, round dead-lights, all closed like coppered eyes of the c...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1860

"The peculiarities of his father and mother were very irksome to him now they were laid bare of all the softening accompaniments of an easy prosperous home, for Tom had very clear prosaic eyes not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: April 26 1870

"The cloud's not danced out of my brain,— / The cloud that made it turn and swim / While hour by hour the books grew dim."

— Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

Date: April 26 1870

"Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!"

— Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

Date: January, 1884

"As a snowflake-crystal caught in the warm hand is no longer a crystal but a drop, so, instead of catching the feeling of relation moving to its term, we find we have caught some substantive thing, usually the last word we were pronouncing, statically taken, and with its function, tendency and pa...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1892

"The thought beneath so slight a film / Is more distinctly seen,-- / As laces just reveal the surge, / Or mists the Apennine."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"A shady friend for torrid days / Is easier to find / Than one of higher temperature / For frigid hour of mind."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

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

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)