Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

"When these resplendent Lights had thus display'd / The shapes and hues of all in Nature made; / The Fish were form'd, depicting Appetites, / And Fowls that soar aloft like Fancy's flights; / Beasts--useful Cattle--Insects--creeping Things-- / Which tread the soil, or soar on wavering wings-- / T...

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

"That none might Momus' wish'd-for window need, / Instinct's heav'n-taught the secret Soul to read-- / In tone, and turn, of human voice, to note, / How passions operate, and feelings float."

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: 1817

"When some bright thought has darted through my brain: / Through all that day I've felt a greater pleasure / Than if I'd brought to light a hidden treasure."

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

Date: 1820

"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1850

"No familiar shapes / Remained, no pleasant images of trees, / Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields; / But huge and mighty forms, that do not live / Like living men, moved slowly through the mind / By day, and were a trouble to my dreams."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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: 1922

"All night, through the eternity of night, / Pain was my portion though I could not feel. / Deep in my humbled heart you ground your heel, / Till I was reft of even my inner light, / Till reason from my mind had taken flight, / And all my world went whirling in a reel."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: w. 1936, 1938

"The year plunges into night / and the heart plunges / lower than night // to an empty, windswept place / without sun, stars or moon / but a peculiar light as of thought // that spins a dark fire-- / whirling upon itself until, / in the cold, it kindles // to make a man aware of nothing / that he...

— Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963)

Date: 1963

"Delicious recollections / float like perfume through the memory."

— Rich, Adrienne (1929-2012)

Date: December 12, 2016

"The mind too, whirling, vectoring, reaching short but at least / reaching, rising, consigning--towards and towards."

— Graham, Jorie (b. 1950)