Date: 1790
"But let me not thus pond'ring, gaping, stand-- / But, lo, I am not at my own command: / Bed, bosom, kiss, embraces, storm my brains, / And, lawless tyrants, bind my will in chains."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1792
"Now that stern habit throws without controul / Her chain of adamant around thy soul / May not th' unhappy Abelard disclose / (To her who pities most) his train of woes?"
preview | full record— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)
Date: w. 1791-2
"But, sent from God, his presence leaves, / To gather home his ripen'd sheaves, / To call encumber'd souls away / From fleshly bonds to boundless day, / (As when the winged hours excite, / And summon forth the morning-light) / And each to convoy to her place / Before the Eternal Father's face."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1792
"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, / Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain."
preview | full record— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)
Date: w. c. 1793? [in MS]
"Love to faults is always blind / Always is to joy inclind / Lawless wingd & unconfind / And breaks all chains from every mind."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: w. c. 1793? [in MS]
"Deceit to secresy confind / Lawful cautious & refind / To every thing but interest blind / And forges fetters for the mind."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1793
"Exulting Reason from her bondage springs, / Claims Heav'n's wide range, and spreads her eagle wings; / While Superstition, lodg'd with bats and owls, / With Horror, and the hopeless maniac, howls."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1794
"In every voice: in every ban, / The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1794
"Forgetfulness, dumbness, necessity! / In chains of the mind locked up, / Like fetters of ice shrinking together."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)