Date: 1651
"Now, treacherous Boy, thou hast me sure, / Playing the Wanton with my Heart, / As foolish Children that a Bird have got, / Slacken the Thread, but not unty the knot."
preview | full record— Sherburne, Sir Edward (bap. 1616, d. 1702)
Date: w. 1652, 1836
"Amongst all those passions which ride men's souls none so jade and tire them out as envy and jealousy; theire journey is longer than any of the rest, they bate seldomer, and commonly ride double, for sure a man cannot bee jealous of his Mistrisse without at the same time envious of his rivall."
preview | full record— Temple, Sir William (1628-1699)
Date: 1660, 1676
"For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ;...
preview | full record— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)
Date: 1661
"But that, whose Sound, in the Pelîack Cave, / A Bridle to the Minds of Heroes gave, / And great Achilles Thoughts, the Centaure lov'd, / And when, upon the Strings, his Finger mov'd, / Hell's, or the Ocean's Fury 'twould allay."
preview | full record— Ross, Thomas (bap. 1620, d. 1675)
Date: 1664
"But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1666
"The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it ...
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671
"'Tis so wild [Wildblood's heart], that the Lady who has it in her keeping, would be glad she were well rid on't: it does so flutter about the Cage. 'Tis a meer Bajazet; and if it be not let out the sooner, will beat out the brains against the Grates."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671
"But is not your heart of the nature of those Birds that breed in one Countrie, and goe to winter in another?"
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1660, 1668
"Have you not seen an early-rising Lark / Spring from her Turf, making the Sun her mark, / Shooting her self aloft, yet higher, higher, / Till she had sung her self into Heaven's Quire? / Thus would he rise in Pray'r, and in a trice / His Soul become a Bird of Paradise."
preview | full record— Wild, Robert (1615/16-1679)
Date: November 1672, 1673
"Ay, ay, when the love is once come so far, that Spiritual Mind will never leave pulling, and pulling, till it has drawn the beastly body after it."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)