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Date: 1742

"Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire; / In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar / Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust; / Dismounted every great and glorious aim; / Embruted every faculty divine; / Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1742

"Celestial Happiness, whene'er she stoops / To visit earth, one shrine the goddess finds, / And one alone, to make her sweet amends / For absent heaven,--the bosom of a friend; / Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft, / Each other's pillow to repose divine."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1742

"My soul is dead, my heart is stone, / A cage of birds and beasts unclean, / A den of thieves, a dire abode / Of dragons, but no house of God."

— Wesley, John and Charles

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Date: 1744

"By toys entangled, or in guilt bemired, / [Ambition] turns a curse; it is our chain and scourge / In this dark dungeon, where confined we lie, / Close-grated by the sordid bars of sense; / All prospect of eternity shut out; / And, but for execution, ne'er set free."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1745

"Imagination is the Paphian shop, / Where feeble Happiness, like Vulcan, lame, / Bids foul Ideas, in their dark recess, / And hot as hell, (which kindled the black fires,) / With wanton art, those fatal arrows form / Which murder all thy time, health, wealth, and fame."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1762-3

"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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Date: 1763, 1767

"The guardian genius of his dawning thought, / Who wide disclos'd to wisdom's sacred ray / The eager inlets of his ample mind, / And pour'd upon each opening mental cell, / The virtue-forming scientific beam / With letter'd and religious radiance fill'd, / The fair expanses of his princely soul, ...

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

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Date: 1767, 1784

"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

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Date: 1773

"Sincere Devotion needs no outward shrine: / The Centre of an humble Soul is Thine."

— Byrom, John (1692-1763)

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Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792

"Thus a large dumpling to its cell confin'd / (A very apt allusion to my mind)."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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