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Date: 1747, 1811

"'Yes, if his soul to reason's rule resign'd, / 'And heaven's own views fair-opening on his mind,/ 'Caught from bright nature's flame the living ray, / 'Through passion's cloud pour'd in resistless day; / 'And taught mankind in reas'ning Pride's despite, / 'That God is wise, and all that is righ...

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

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Date: w. 1740, 1748

"Thirsting for Knowledge, but to know the right, / Thro' judgment's optick guide th' illusive sight, / To let in rays on Reason's darkling cell, / And Prejudice's lagging mists dispel."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

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Date: 1750

Vain doubts and groundless fears tear the foolish bosom and preced the "rising storm"

— Eusden, Laurence (1688-1730)

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Date: 1765, 1770

"On Life's rough sea by stormy passions tost, / Freedom and Virtue were together lost."

— Wodhull, Michael (1740-1816)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"And yet, let but a zephyr's breath begin/ To stir the latent excellence within-- / Waked in that moment's elemental strife, / Impassion'd genius feels the breath of life; / The' expanding heart delights to leap and glow, / The pulse to kindle, and the tear to flow."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"But he whose active, unencumber'd mind / Leaves this low earth and all its mists behind, / Fond in a pure unclouded sky to glow, / Like the bright orb that rises on the Po, / O'er half the globe with steady splendour shines, / And ripens virtues as it ripens mines."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1779

"Fierce passions discompose the mind, as tempests vex the sea"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1782

Complacency may breath a gentle gail over the thoughts and swell an "easy sail"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1789?

The placid current of the mind may be bestorm'd so that "th' ideal billows, raging, rise"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

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