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Date: 1782

"Peace be to those (such peace as earth can give,) / Who live in pleasure, dead even while they live; / Born capable indeed of heavenly truth, / But down to latest age from earliest youth, / Their mind a wilderness through want of care, / The plough of wisdom never entering there."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1784

The partial Muse, has from my earliest hours / Smil'd on the rugged path I'm doom'd to tread, / And still with sportive hand has snatch'd wild flowers, / To weave fantastic garlands for my head: / But far, far happier is the lot of those / Who never learn'd her dear delusive art; / Which, while i...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

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Date: 1784

"Not death itself thine empire can destroy; / Towards thee, even then, we turn the languid eye; / Still trust in thee to bid our memory bloom, / And scatter roses round the silent tomb."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

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Date: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

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Date: 1785

Prejudice may take "deeper root" in "men of stronger minds"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1785

Learning may grow beneath Disciplines care, "a thriving and vigorous plant"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1785

Rural scenes may "nurse / The growing seeds of wisdom"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1785

Virtue is like a "lowly creeping, modest and yet fair" plant that thrives most "where little seen"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1785

Man in society is like a flower: "'Tis there alone / His faculties expanded in full bloom/ Shine out"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1786

"Like caterpillars dangling under trees / By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, / Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace / The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, / While every worm industriously weaves / And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves; / So numerous are the follie...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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