Date: 1785

"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"'Twixt shame and passion floats the struggling mind, / To Virtue now, and now to vice inclin'd, / This frowns refusal, that persuades to yield, / Till Reason falls, and Passion takes the field."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1788

Humanity "Assists thy roving fancy in its flight, / To crown thy airy sallies with delight."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"Like a snow-ball, the mind, fraught with peace in its prime, / Moves swiftly adown the steep shelvings of Time; / Accumulates filth from Society's sons, / And strengthens and hardens its coat as it runs; / Till habit on habit is negligent laid, / And the object appears motley, vile, and ill-made...

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: February, 1798

"And what (I said) tho' blasphemy's loud scream / With that sweet music of deliv'rance strove; / Tho' all the fierce and drunken passions wove / A dance more wild than ever maniac's dream; / Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, / The sun was rising, tho' ye hid his light!"

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1803

"Ah, how the human mind wearies herself / With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom / Impenetrable, speculates amiss!"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1803

"And all the floating thoughts we find / Upon the surface of the mind."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: w. 1798-1800, 1814

"To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come, / Whether from breath of outward circumstance, / Or from the Soul--an impulse to herself-- / I would give utterance in numerous verse."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

"Solicit Fancy from celestial flights, / To wander o'er the World for frail delights / And crowd Imagination's rooms, immense, / With what relates alone to Time and Sense!"

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

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)