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Date: 1770

"But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. / As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, / Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, / Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, / Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

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Date: 1771, 1776

"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"Were it not so, the soul, all dead and lost, / Like the tall cliff beneath the' impassive frost, / Form'd for no end, and impotent to please, / Would lie inactive on the couch of ease: / And, heedless of proud fame's immortal lay, / Sleep all her dull divinity away."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1771, 1816

"Thus man [like a cataract], the harpy of his own content, / With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent, / Wild in the rapid vortex whirls the soul, / Till reason bursts, impatient of controul."

— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)

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Date: 1771, 1816

"But now the wavy conflict tends to peace, / And jarring elements their tumults cease, / Placid below, the stream obsequious flows, / And silent wonders how fell Discord grows./ So the calm mind reviews her tortur'd state, / Resuming reason for the cool debate."

— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)

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Date: w. January 24, 1789

"Your dear idea reigns, and reigns alone; / Each thought intoxicated homage yields, / And riots wanton in forbidden fields."

— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)

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Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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Date: 1792

"But souls in common are a dreary waste, / By brambles, thistles, barb'rous docks disgrac'd; / That need the ploughshare, harrow, and the fire--"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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