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Date: April 1750, 1791

"O what can words, / The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts, / Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove / Thro' the vast concave of th'aetherial round) / If to the Heav'n of Heavens they'd win their way / Advent'rous, like the birds of night they're lost, / And delug'd in the flood of ...

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: April 1750, 1791

"Tho' gratitude were bless'd with all the pow'rs / Her bursting heart cou'd long for, tho' the swift, / The firey-wing'd imagination soar'd / Beyond ambition's wish--yet all were vain / To speak him as he is, who is INEFFABLE."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: June 1751, 1752

"Thou [Eagle] servant of almighty JOVE, / Who, free and swift as thought, could'st rove / To the bleak north's extremest goal."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: June 1751, 1752

"Thou [Eagle] type of wit and sense confin'd, / Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind, / Who study downward on the ground."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: June, 1756

"I sent back memory, in heedful guise, / To search the records of preceding years; / Home, like the raven to the ark, she flies, / Croaking bad tidings to my trembling ears."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: 1760, 1761

"Reason, collected in herself, disdains / The slavish yoke of arbitrary chains"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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Date: 1762-3

"Whatever unto them is brought / Is carried on the wings of thought / Before his throne, where, in full state, / He on their merits holds debate, / Examines, cross-examines, weighs / Their right to censure or to praise."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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Date: 1762-3

"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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Date: 1762

"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1762-3

"This glorious system form'd for man / To practise when and how he can, / If the five senses in alliance / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroken, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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