Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"But beyond / This energy of truth, whose dictates bind / Assenting reason, the benignant sire, / To deck the honour'd paths of just and good, / Has added bright imagination's rays."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1745
"With inward eyes, and silent as the grave, / They stand collecting every beam of thought, / Till their hearts kindle with Divine delight; / For all their thoughts, like angels seen of old / In Israel's dream, come from, and go to, heaven."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1746, 1753
Love "'Tis like soft air, through which admitted light / Peoples pleas'd fancy, and lends shape to sight: / Yet, like that air, disturb'd, man's quiet breaks, / Tempests his reason, and his triumph shakes."
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: w. May, 1756; 1761
"For these, if I forget my patron's praise, / While bright ideas dance upon my mind, / Ne'er may these eyes behold auspicious days, / May friends prove faithless, and the Muse unkind."
preview | full record— Fawkes, Francis (1720-1777)
Date: 1781
"Her teeming Thoughts with bright Conceptions glow, / Ideas crowd, and Lines spontaneous flow."
preview | full record— Keate, George (1729-1797)
Date: 1785
"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)