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Date: November 10, 1813

"I by no means rank poetry or poets high in the scale of intellect. This may look like affectation, but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruptions prevents an earthquake."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: 1814

"No single passion, and no ruling thought / That leaves the rest, as once, unseen, unsought, / But the wild prospect when the Soul reviews, / All rushing through their thousand avenues"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: w. 1798-1800, 1814

"Not Chaos, not / The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, / Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out / By help of dreams--can breed such fear and awe / As fall upon us often when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-- / My haunt, and the main region of my song."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

One may try "Conjecture's trackless region round, / To judge what phantasms Fancy might have found-- / What Game the glances of her Hawks might trace, / Or Greyhounds view in visionary chace"

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

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Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

Ideas are "like the silent Snows, by Winter spread, / In silvery treasures, o'er the mountain's head; / Whose stores, while undisturb'd, each hour decay, / And hue, form, substance, quickly waste away; / But stirr'd, by winds, like words, with action strong, /Each sphere enlarges as it rolls alon...

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

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Date: 1820

"Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan / Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart / Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, / And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1820

"To cheer thy state / I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits, / Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, / And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, / Its world-surrounding aether."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1820

"On a poet's lips I slept / Dreaming like a love-adept / In the sound his breathing kept; / Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, / But feeds on the aƫreal kisses / Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1820

"Only a sense / Remains of them, like the omnipotence / Of music, when the inspired voice and lute / Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, / Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, / Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

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Date: 1838

All the "eye doth meet is mist and crag" in "the world of thought and mental might"

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.