Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"So much the rather thou, celestial Light, / Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers / Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence / Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1687
"This Heart of mine, now wreck'd upon despair, / Was once as free and careless as the Air; / In th' early Morning of my tender years, / E're I was sensible of Hopes and Fears, / It floated in a Sea of Mirth and Ease, / And thought the World was only made to please; / No adverse Wind had ever stop...
preview | full record— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)
Date: 1691
"All these assurances made but weak impressions on the Princess's Spirit, she felt something at the bottom of her heart, which would not suffer her to receive the joy which such news ought to give her, and this beam of hope appeared to her like a Sun shine just before a Storm, which it seemed wil...
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1692
"We Truth by a Refracted ray / View, like the Sun at Ebb of day: / Whom the gross, treacherous Atmosphere / Makes where it is not, to appear."
preview | full record— Norris, John (1657-1712)
Date: 1701
"Beauty's the least prevailing Snare to me; tho' her great Soul makes me admire her Person; yet were she deform'd, Virtue, like the Sun, wou'd shine through every Cloud."
preview | full record— Baker, Thomas (b. 1680-1)
Date: 1710 [1719, 1729]
"Black Night comes on, and interrupts the Day, / E'er it can chase the Mists and Fogs away; / The Dregs of Flesh and Drossy Lees, o'errun / The Soul, and weigh the strugling Spirit down:"
preview | full record— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)
Date: w. c. 1709, 1711
"If once right Reason drives that Cloud away, / Truth breaks upon us with resistless Day."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1712
"And as the Sun by his own Heat exhales / Clouds from the Sea, and Fogs from marshy Vales; / Which (tho' base-born) ambitious higher move, / Prevent the Light, and hide the Worlds above. / So from corporeal Dregs the Mists condense, / And intercept the Messengers of Sense."
preview | full record— Cobb, Samuel (1675-1713); Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718); Quillet, Claudius (fl.1640-1656)
Date: 1712
"The clouded Images their March delay, / Till the rouz'd Soul, by a superiour Ray / Breaks thro' the Shade, and urges on the Day."
preview | full record— Cobb, Samuel (1675-1713); Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718); Quillet, Claudius (fl.1640-1656)
Date: Saturday, May 17, 1712
"Mirth is like a Flash of Lightning, that breaks thro a Gloom of Clouds, and glitters for a Moment; Chearfulness keeps up a kind of Day-light in the Mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual Serenity."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)