Date: 1773
"Till every worldly thought within me dies, / And earth's gay pageants vanish from my eyes; / Till all my sense is lost in infinite, / And one vast object fills my aching sight."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1773
"Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies, / Till some lov'd objects strikes her wand'ring eyes, / Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, / And soft captivity involves the mind."
preview | full record— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)
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: 1773
"Fancy might now her silken pinions try / To rise from earth, and sweep th' expanse on high"
preview | full record— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)
Date: 1785
"Oft as I trod my native wilds alone, / Strong gusts of thought would rise, but rise to die; / The portals of the swelling soul ne'er oped / By liberal converse, rude ideas strove / Awhile for vent, but found it not, and died."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
An infant soul must be lifted to Jehovah's throne because "[T]he ductile mind, / Pliant as wax, shall wear the mould you give"
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
" No glossy diction e'er can aid the thought, / First stamp'd in ignorance, with error fraught."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1787
"And life's first moment stamp'd my soul immortal."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)