Date: 1702

"My Heart beats higher, and my nimble Spirits / Ride swiftly thro' their purple Channels round: / 'Tis the last blaze of Life: Nature revives / Like a dim, winking Lamp, that flashes brightly / With parting Light, and strait is dark for ever."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: November 25, 1707; 1708

"No!--'tis my Glory that the Christian Light / Has dawn'd, like Day, upon my darker Mind, / And taught my Soul the noblest use of Reason; / Taught her to soar aloft, to search, to know / The vast eternal Fountain of her Being."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1820

"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)