Date: 1667
"We stifle our own Sun, and live in Shade; / But where its beams do once appear, / They make that person of himself afraid, / And to his own acts most severe."
preview | full record— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)
Date: 1677
"He hath a Lamp, but that Lamp hath no Oyl. / He hath a Soul, but what doth that embrace?"
preview | full record— Speed, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. 1679?)
Date: w. 1677, published October, 1682
"Some Beams of Wit on other souls may fall, / Strike through and make a lucid intervall; / But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, / His rising Fogs prevail upon the Day."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: November, 1682
"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul; and as on high, / Those rolling fires discover but the sky / Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray / Was lent not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better ...
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: November, 1682
"And as those nightly tapers disappear / When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere / So pale grows reason at religion's sight: / So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: November, 1682
"Then those who follow'd reason's dictates right; Liv'd up, and lifted high their natural light; / With Socrates may see their Maker's Face, / While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1685
"These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, / No rays of outward sunshine can dispel; / But nature and right reason must display / Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1689
"In vain they strive your glorious Lamp to hide / In that dark Lanthorn to all noble minds, / Which, through the smallest cranny is descry'd, / Whose force united no resistance finds"
preview | full record— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)
Date: 1692
"But when dilated organs let in day / To the young soul, and gave it room to play, / At his first aptness, the maternal love / Those rudiments of reason did improve."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1700, 1717
"He, tho' from Heav'n remote, to Heav'n cou'd move, / With Strength of Mind, and tread th' Abyss above; / And penetrate with his interior Light / Those upper Depths, which Nature hid from Sight"
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)