Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1782

One may have a mind "Not yet so blank, or fashionably blind, / But now and then perhaps a feeble ray /Of distant wisdom shoots across his way"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1793

" When painful truths invade the mind, / Ev'n wisdom wishes to be blind, / And hates th' officious ray."

— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)

Date: 1798 [1797?]

"If with big meaning pregnant Fancy teem'd; / If o'er each thought, the light of Genius beam'd; / If quick Perception new ideas found, / And lent to verse new luxuries of sound [...]"

— Jones, Jenkin [Captain] (fl. 1798)

Date: 1922

"I plucked my soul out of its secret place, / And held it to the mirror of my eye, / To see it like a star against the sky, / A twitching body quivering in space, / A spark of passion shining on my face."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: 2001

"in you the in moon / its rays entwined in my mind's / hair hangs down right in"

— Hollo, Anselm (b. 1934)

Date: March, 2014

"Culture: a kind of knife: / cuts one way     opens / your brain to a certain / breed of light     shaves / consciousness to its // purpose, its cross."

— Seibles, Tim (b. 1955)