Date: 1762-3

"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"This glorious system form'd for man / To practise when and how he can, / If the five senses in alliance / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroken, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"He [Reason], upright Justicer, no doubt / Ad libitum puts in and out, / Adjusts and settles in a trice / What virtue is, and what is vice."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"Opinions should be free as air; / No man, whate'er his rank, what're / His qualities, a claim can found / That my opinion must be bound, / And square with his; such slavish chains / From foes the liberal soul disdains; / Nor can, though true to friendship, bend / To wear them even from a friend."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"Let those who rigid judgment own / Submissive bow at Judgment's throne, / And if they of no value hold / Pleasure, till pleasure is grown cold, / Pall'd and insipid, forced to wait / For Judgment's regular debate / To give it warrant, let them find / Dull subjects suited to their mind."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1767

"And stamps Thine image on our hearts / In purity and love"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1822

"I see him plainly with my Minds Eye."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1946

"A ghost is someone: death has left a hole / For the lead-colored soul to beat the fire"

— Lowell, Robert (1917-1977)

Date: 1956

"'Can there be such stubbornness-- / A soul grown feverish, clutching its dead body-tree / Like a last storm-crossed leaf? "

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)