Date: 1788
"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1789
"Thro' thy [Fancy's] false medium then, no longer view'd, / May fancied pain and fancied pleasure fly, / And I, as from me all thy dreams depart, / Be to my wayward destiny subdu'd."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1793
"In fancy's mirror dreadful scenes appear, / Design'd by doubt, and magnified by fear, / There some gay female, frivolous and vain, / Artfully forms the captivating chain; / Makes him the slave of passion and caprice, / Perverts his principles, and wounds his peace."
preview | full record— Burrell [née Raymond, later Clay], Sophia, Lady Burrell (1750-1802)
Date: 1799
Pleasures past "glow sublime" in Memory's "crystal prism" and "Beam on the gloom'd and disappointed Mind"
preview | full record— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)
Date: 1806
"Thy pure flame / Would light the sense opake, and warm the spring / Of boundless ecstacy; while nature's laws / So violated, plead, immortal-tongu'd, / For her dark-fated children; lead them forth / From bondage infamous!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1811
"Her hazle eye, unfix'd and bright, / Dazzles with ever-changing light, / Like flames toss'd by the wind; / Now swimming in quick-passing sadness, / Now laughing in her soul's pure gladness, / The mirror of her mind"
preview | full record— Mitford, Mary Russell (1787-1855)
Date: 1842
"For now with Fancy's glass they see"
preview | full record— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)
Date: 1842
"E'en the mind's eye a glassy mirror shews, / And far too deeply her bold pencil draws"
preview | full record— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)