Date: January 16, 1717

"Madam, excuse this Absence of Mind; my animal Spirits had deserted the Avenues of my Senses, and retired to the Recesses of the Brain, to contemplate a beautiful Idea. I could not force the vagrant Creatures back again into their Posts, to move those Parts of the Body that express Civility."

— Gay, John (1685-1732); Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

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 aëreal kisses / Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)