Date: 1733, 1748
"Where thou [Memory] art not, the cheerless human mind / Is one vast void, all darksome, sad, and blind; / No trace of anything remains behind."
preview | full record— Pilkington, Laetitia (c. 1709-1750)
Date: w. 1739, 1762
Melancholy's "transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: w. 1739, 1762
"Thro' Reason's clearer Optics view'd, / How stript of all it's Pomp, how rude / Appears the painted Cheat."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1764
"Dead Letters, thus with Living Notions fraught, / Prove to the Soul the Telescopes of Thought"
preview | full record— Grierson [née Crawley], Constantia (1704/5-1732)
Date: 1773
"Soaring though air to find the bright abode, / Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God, / We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, / And leave the rolling universe behind; / From star to star the mental optics rove, / Measure the skies, and range the realms above."
preview | full record— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)
Date: 1785
"In thy mild rhetoric dwells a social love / Beyond my wild conceptions, optics false!/ Thro' which I falsely judg'd of polish'd life"
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1788
"Since there is no convexity in MIND, / Why are thy genial beams to parts confined?"
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1788
"Whene'er to Afric's shores I turn my eyes, / Horrors of deepest, deadliest guilt arise; / I see, by more than Fancy's mirror shewn, / The burning village, and the blazing town."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1788
"The storm once past, he gains the friendly ray / Of hope, to guide him through the dang'rous way; / Smiling, she bids each future prospect rise, / Through fancy's vary'd mirror, to his eyes."
preview | full record— Falconar, Maria (b. 1771-) and Harriet (b. 1774-)
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)