Date: 1642, 1655, 1668

"Nor wonder, if (advantag'd in my flight, / By taking wing from thy auspicious height) / Through untrac't ways, and aery paths I fly, / More boundless in my Fancy than my eie."

— Denham, John, Sir (1615-1669)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move / Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird / Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal note."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1681

"Here at the fountain's sliding foot, / Or at some fruit tree's mossy root, / Casting the body's vest aside, / My soul into the boughs does glide; / There like a bird it sits and sings, / Then whets, and combs its silver wings; / And, till prepar'd for longer flight, / Waves in its plumes the var...

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1691

"What Energy doth thrô his Vitals move; / What Magick Charm doth stirr him up to Love? / When Thoughts on winged Particles advance, / When piercing Looks the Lover's mutually entrance, / And their Souls on the fiery Atoms dance?"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1700, 1717

"Thus all Things are but alter'd, nothing dies; / And here and there th' unbodied Spirit flies, / By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossess, / And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast; / Or hunts without, till ready Limbs it find, / And actuates those according to their kind; / From Tenement ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1718

"As in a Hive's vimineous Dome, / Ten thousand Bees enjoy their Home; / Each does her studious Action vary, / To go and come, to fetch and carry: / Each still renews her little Labor; / Nor justles her assiduous Neighbour."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1725-6

"'Tis hard, he cries, to bring to sudden sight / Ideas that have wing'd their distant flight."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), Broome, W. and Fenton, E.

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735

"But if my Soul, / To this gross Clay confin'd, flutters on Earth / With less ambitious Wing; unskill'd to range / From Orb to Orb, where Newton leads the Way; / And view with piercing Eye the grand Machine, / Worlds above Worlds; subservient to his Voice, / Who, veil'd in clouded Majesty, alone ...

— Somervile, William (1675-1742)

Date: 1743

"The noblest spirit, fighting her hard fate / In this damp, dusky region, charged with storms, / But feebly flutters, yet untaught to fly; / Or, flying, short her flight, and sure her fall."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)