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Date: 1727

"With inflected View, / Thence on th' Ideal Kingdom, swift, she turns / Her Eye; and instant, at her virtual Glance, / Th' obedient Phantoms vanish, and appear, / Compound, divide, and into Order shift, / Each to his rank, from plain Perception up / To Notion quite abstract; where first begins / ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

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Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such / As never mingled with the vulgar dream, / Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

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Date: October, 1739

"Bid Fancy quit her fairy cell, / In all her colours drest / While prompt her sallies to control, / Reason, the judge, recalls the soul / To Truth's severest test."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Such then is the abode / Of folly in the mind; and such the shapes / In which she governs her obsequious train."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Let the mind / Recall one partner of the various league, / Immediate, lo! the firm confederates rise, / And each his former station strait resumes: / One movement governs the consenting throng, / And all at once with rosy pleasure shine, / Or all are sadden'd with the glooms of care."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"By these mysterious ties the busy power / Of memory her ideal train preserves / Intire; or when they would elude her watch, / Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste / Of dark oblivion."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"[T]hus pale revenge / Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands / Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts, / Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws / That keeps them from their prey: thus all the plagues / The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene / The tragic muse discloses, under shapes...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Then the inexpressive strain / Diffuses its inchantment: fancy dreams / Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves, / And vales of bliss: the intellectual power / Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear, / And smiles: the passions, gently sooth'd away, / Sink to divine repose, and love and joy /...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Then to the secrets of the working mind / Attentive turn; from dim oblivion call / Her fleet, ideal band; and bid them, go!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"But beyond / This energy of truth, whose dictates bind / Assenting reason, the benignant sire, / To deck the honour'd paths of just and good, / Has added bright imagination's rays."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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