Date: 1685

"These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, / No rays of outward sunshine can dispel; / But nature and right reason must display / Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1684 [1685]

"Would I could coin my very heart to gold!"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1686, 1712

"See how my melting Passions hast and run, / Like Virgin-wax before the scorching Sun!"

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"But while confin'd to this dark Cell I lie, / My captive Soul can't reach its native Sky"

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"Here, even my Will's a slave to Passions made, / Passions which have its Liberty betray'd."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

One may be " to a narrow Dungeon confin'd, / A Cave that darkens and restrains [the] Mind"

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"When first my Soul put on its fleshly Load, / It was Imprison'd in the dark Abode; / My Feet were Fetters, my Hands Manacles, / My Sinews Chains, and all Confinement else; / My Bones the Bars of my loath'd Prison grate; / My Tongue the Turn-key, and my Mouth the Gate."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"O! that some usual Labour were injoyn'd, / And not the Tyrant Vice enslav'd my mind! / No weight of Chains cou'd grieve my captive Hands, / Like the loath'd Drudg'ry of its base Commands."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"Thus Vice and Virtue do my Soul divide, / Like a Ship tost between the Wind and Tide."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1687, 1691

"The Cardinal who pretends to read the Souls of Men, and who is inferior to none perhaps in this Art, caused this Person who had so long attended, to be called to him, and thus spake to him."

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]