Date: 1682-1735

"I am this crumb of dust which is design'd / To make my Pen unto thy Praise alone, / And my dull Phancy I would gladly grinde / Unto an Edge on Zions Pretious Stone."

— Taylor, Edward (1642-1729)

Date: August 4, 1778

"Behold! the soul shall waft away, / Whene'er we come to die, / And leave its cottage made of clay, / In twinkling of an eye."

— Hammon, Jupiter (1711-c.1800)

Date: 1890

"I've known her from an ample nation / Choose one; / Then close the valves of her attention / Like stone."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"Least village boasts its blacksmith, / Whose anvil's even din / Stands symbol for the finer forge / That soundless tugs within, // Refining these impatient ores / With hammer and with blaze, / Until the designated light / Repudiate the forge."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1922

"Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears, / Transforming me into a shape of flame. / I will come out, back to your world of tears, / A stronger soul within a finer frame."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: 1922

"I do not fear to face the fact and say, / How darkly-dull my living hours have grown, / My wounded heart sinks heavier than stone, / Because I loved you longer than a day!"

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: 1946

"A ghost is someone: death has left a hole / For the lead-colored soul to beat the fire"

— Lowell, Robert (1917-1977)

Date: 2010

"Yet as I lift up this / dull desert stone, the weight of it is full / of slower, longer thoughts than mind can have."

— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)

Date: 2010

"Be my mind, stone lying on my grave."

— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)

Date: February 27, 2017

"And I don't want to pray, but I can picture / the plants deepening right now into the soil, / wanting to live, so I lie down among them, / in my ripped pink tank top, filthy and covered / in sweat, among red burying beetles and dirt / that's been turned and turned like a problem / in the mind."

— Limón, Ada (b. March 28, 1976)