Date: 1773

The soul contains "An embryo of God, a spark of fire divine / Which must burn on for ages."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"But if thou com'st with frown austere / To nurse the brood of care and fear; / To bid our sweetest passions die, / And leave us in their room a sigh; / Or if thine aspect stern have power / To wither each poor transient flower, / That cheers the pilgrimage of woe, / And dry the springs whence ho...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1785

"O! ye better souls, / Ye nobler few, who slumber in your race, / Tho' well begun, and forwarded with hope, / Say, will you see a fellow-spirit lost, / Thus swallow'd in the ever-yawning gulf, / That frights the mental eye, and e'en appals / The man who firmest stands, nor lend your aid / To sav...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1788

"When the sharp iron wounds his inmost soul, / And his strain'd eyes in burning anguish roll; / Will the parch'd negro find, ere he expire, / No pain in hunger, and no heat in fire?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"In Reason's eye, in Wisdom's fair account, / Your sum of glory boasts a like amount; / The means may differ, but the end's the same; / Conquest is pillage with a nobler name."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"On feeling hearts she [Mercy] sheds celestial dew, / And breathes her spirit o'er th' enlighten'd few; / From soul to soul the spreading influence steals, / Till every breast the soft contagion feels."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"The hollow winds of Night, no more / In wild, unequal cadence pour / On musing Fancy's wakeful ear, / The groan of agony severe / From yon dark vessel, which contains / The wretch new bound in hopeless chains; / Whose soul with keener anguish bleeds, / As AFRIC's less'ning shore recedes."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

Slavery "speculates with skill refin'd, / How deep a wound will stab the mind; / How far the spirit can endure / Calamity, that hopes no cure."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

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."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)