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Date: November 25, 1707; 1708

"Fools that we are! to vex the lab'ring Brain, / And waste decaying Nature thus with Thought; / To keep the weary Spirits waking still; / To goad and drive 'em in eternal Rounds / Of restless wracking Care; 'tis all in vain. / Blind Goddess Chance! henceforth I follow thee."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

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Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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Date: 1710 [1719, 1729]

"The Senses stand around; the Spirits roam / To seize and bring the fleeting Objects home: / Thro' every Nerve and every Pore they pass."

— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)

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Date: 1712

"When she to foreign Objects Audience gives, / Their Strokes and Motions in the Brain perceives, / As these Perceptions we Ideas name, / From her own Pow'r and active Nature came, / So when discern'd by Intellectual Light, / Her self her various Passions does excite, / To Ill her Hate, to Good he...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1712

"Still travel to and fro the Nervous way, / And their Impressions to the Brain convey, / Where their Report the Vital Envoys make, / And with new Orders are remanded back."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1712

"The ready Phantomes at her Nod advance, / And form the busie Intellectual Dance: / While her fair Scenes to vary, or supply, / She singles out fit Images, that lye / In Memory's Records, which faithful hold / Objects immense in secret Marks inroll'd, / The sleeping Forms at her Command awake, / ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"By this means they awaken other Ideas of the same Sett, which immediately determine a new Dispatch of Spirits, that in the same manner open other Neighbouring Traces, till at last the whole Sett of them is blown up, and the whole Prospect or Garden flourishes in the Imagination."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

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Date: 1720

"His Fancy still awake; the roving Guest / Usurps the Throne of Reason in his Breast: / Forms great Ideas, and religious Schemes, / A busy mime, and floats in golden Dreams."

— Amhurst, Nicholas (1697-1742)

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Date: 1735

"God gave us Reason ... A faithful guide to comfort and to save, / Till the mind floats, like Peter on the wave."

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

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Date: 1737

""Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.