Date: 1789
"'Tis [the letter of the law] the birdlime of reason to fasten our senses."
preview | full record— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)
Date: w. 1789, 1804
"While Vanity unveils her whiffling flags, / Her glittering trinkets, and her tawdry rags-- / Spreads spangled nets, and fills her philter'd bowl, / To fix each Sense, and fascinate the Soul-- / Her birdlime twigs contrived with such sly Art, / That while they tangle thoughts, they trap the heart...
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1790
"The passions join the fierce invading host; / And I and virtue are o'erwhelm'd and lost-- / Passions that in a martingale should move; / Wild horses loosen'd by the hands of Love."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827
"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1790
'While we converse together, and I feel / 'Secret correction from the bolt of truth / 'Shot home, my better soul in triumph rides, / Borne on the wings of reason to her throne."
preview | full record— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)
Date: 1791
"In his soul was the serpent coil'd round in his heart, hid from the light, as in a cleft rock"
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1792
"Ah me! the passion that my soul misled / Was check'd, not conquer'd; buried, but not dead: / Now bursting from the grave, in evil hour, / It hastens to its prey with fiercer pow'r, / And, vulture-like, with appetite increas'd / It riots on the undiminish'd feast."
preview | full record— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)
Date: 1792
"Nay, from the palaces the Virtues fly, / While boldly entering from their beastly stye, / The vulgar passions rush to pig with kings!
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1793
"The offspring of mind is daily sacrificed by hecatombs to the genius of monarchy."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
The author can't understand an afterlife "where the mind, doomed to everlasting inactivity, shall be wholly a prey to the upbraidings of remorse and the sarcasms of devils, is so foreign to the system of things with which I am acquainted"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)