Date: 1890

"I've known her from an ample nation / Choose one; / Then close the valves of her attention / Like stone."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"Least village boasts its blacksmith, / Whose anvil's even din / Stands symbol for the finer forge / That soundless tugs within, // Refining these impatient ores / With hammer and with blaze, / Until the designated light / Repudiate the forge."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 2001

"Pebble, question, soul: no one can see all sides at once, but there is no side that cannot be seen."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)

Date: October 28, 2012

"Each grasped, in the unflinching gaze of the other, a silent acknowledgment of the nobility of man, especially as manifested in work, the work that purified the soul the way steel is purified in the smelter. That sort of thing."

— Saunders, George (b. 1958)