Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"But know that in the soul / Are many lesser faculties, that serve / Reason as chief; among these Fancy next / Her office holds; of all external things / Which the five watchful senses represent, / She forms imaginations, aery shapes, / Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames / All what...
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"Oft in her absence mimick Fancy wakes / To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes, / Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams; / Ill matching words and deeds long past or late."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"[T]he soul / Reason receives, and reason is her being, / Discursive, or intuitive; discourse / Is oftest Yours, the latter most is ours, / Differing but in degree, of kind the same."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace / Total they mix."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"Mammon led them on-- / Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell / From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts / Were always downward bent."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move / Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird / Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal note."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"[H]orrour and doubt distract / His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir / The Hell within him; for within him Hell / He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell / One step, no more than from himself, can fly / By change of place."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"Him there they found / Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, / Assaying by his devilish art to reach / The organs of her fancy, and with them forge / Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise / Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise / At least distempered, discontented thoughts, / Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, / Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell / Of fancy, my internal sight"
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)