Date: w. c. 1425-1440
"Then wolle the chambir of my thought trewly / Of plesaunce take a light in eche parté / Such ioy wolle him aray so fresshe and hy / That waken must myn heuy hert slepé / Out of his fowle and sluggissh slogardé."
preview | full record— Charles [d'Orléans], duke of Orléans (1394-1465)
Date: 1658
"The Alc'ran sayes, (which who will may beleeve) / The Moon descended into Mahomet's sleeve: / 'Tis strange! yet God doth his loves lamp impart / T'a more coarcted room, what's that? the heart."
preview | full record— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)
Date: 1697
"Oh, let no groundless Prejudice oppose / The Light, that from so pure a Fountain flows. / May these kind Beams dispel the Clouds, and find / An unobstructed Passage to your Mind."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1717, 1736
"Dim lights of life that burn a length of years, / Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres"
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: w 1710, 1720
"Whilst like the Lamp's last Flame, their trembling Souls / Are on the Wing to leave their mortal Goals."
preview | full record— Ramsay, Allan (1684-1758)
Date: 1734, 1753
"Were it a crime in flashing souls, to rise, / And strike each other thro' the meeting eyes; / Those op'ning windows had not let in light, / Nor stream'd ideas out, to voice the sight."
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1742
"From dreams, where Thought in Fancy's maze runs mad, / To reason, that heaven-lighted lamp in man, / Once more I wake; and at the destined hour, / Punctual as lovers to the moment sworn, / I keep my assignation with my woe."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: w. 1740, 1748
"Thirsting for Knowledge, but to know the right, / Thro' judgment's optick guide th' illusive sight, / To let in rays on Reason's darkling cell, / And Prejudice's lagging mists dispel."
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: 1761, 1790
"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)
Date: 1763, 1767
"The guardian genius of his dawning thought, / Who wide disclos'd to wisdom's sacred ray / The eager inlets of his ample mind, / And pour'd upon each opening mental cell, / The virtue-forming scientific beam / With letter'd and religious radiance fill'd, / The fair expanses of his princely soul, ...
preview | full record— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)