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."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
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."
preview | full record— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)
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."
preview | full record— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)
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"
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827
"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
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--"
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1814
"No single passion, and no ruling thought / That leaves the rest, as once, unseen, unsought, / But the wild prospect when the Soul reviews, / All rushing through their thousand avenues"
preview | full record— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Date: w. 1798-1800, 1814
"Not Chaos, not / The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, / Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out / By help of dreams--can breed such fear and awe / As fall upon us often when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-- / My haunt, and the main region of my song."
preview | full record— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
Date: 1814, 1816, 1896
One may try "Conjecture's trackless region round, / To judge what phantasms Fancy might have found-- / What Game the glances of her Hawks might trace, / Or Greyhounds view in visionary chace"
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1814, 1816, 1896
Ideas are "like the silent Snows, by Winter spread, / In silvery treasures, o'er the mountain's head; / Whose stores, while undisturb'd, each hour decay, / And hue, form, substance, quickly waste away; / But stirr'd, by winds, like words, with action strong, /Each sphere enlarges as it rolls alon...
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)