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!"

— 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."

— 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 ...

— 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"

— 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--"

— 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"

— 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"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: w. c. 1800-1807, 1866

"We are led to Believe a Lie / When we see not Thro the Eye / Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night / When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light / God Appears & God is Light / To those poor Souls who dwell in Night / But does a Human Form Display / To those who Dwell in Realms of day"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1804

"Thro' Error's maze, thro' Folly's night, / The lamp of Reason lends me light"

— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)

Date: 1805

"And Thou, Minerva, pr'ythee say, / Why with so bright a mental ray, / And all that marks the blue-ey'd Maid, / Hast thou this favour'd Boy array'd?"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)