Date: 1782
One may have a mind "Not yet so blank, or fashionably blind, / But now and then perhaps a feeble ray /Of distant wisdom shoots across his way"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1783
" And when thou yields to night thy wide domain, / Let rays of truth enlight his sleeping brain."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1783
"When first the orient rays of beauty move / The conscious soul, they light the lamp of love"
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)
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)
Date: 1788
"Hence at each sound imagination glows; / Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows; / Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong and clear, / And fills the impassioned heart and lulls the harmonious ear."
preview | full record— Collins, William (1721-1759)
Date: 1788
"Thou Christian emperor in whose generous breast / The light of pure devotion shone impress'd, / That sacred light descending from above, / An emanation of coelestial love; / With speed of light'ning spread the lambent ray, / Till realms of darkness kindled into day; / From God himself the spark ...
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1796
"He ponders on the world,--abhors the whole; / While black as night, his gloomy thought expands / O'er life's perplexing paths, and barren sands"
preview | full record— Merry, Robert (1755-1798)
Date: October 4, 1802
"Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth / A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud / Enveloping the Earth--"
preview | full record— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
Date: 1803
Genius may "separate the clouds by error spread, / Till all the gloom is vanquish'd, and the light / Of intellectual day wide-blazing streams"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)
Date: w. c. 1800-1807, 1866
"The Questioner who sits so sly / Shall never know how to Reply / He who replies to words of Doubt / Doth put the Light of Knowledge out"
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)