Date: 1785
"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
The mind may be "enlighten'd from above"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1786
"Young Fancy, oft in rainbow vest array'd, / Points to new scenes that in succession pass / Across the wond'rous mirror that she bears, / And bids thy unsated soul and wandering eye / A wider range o'er all her prospects take."
preview | full record— Headley, Henry (1765-1788)
Date: 1787
"May Europe's race the generous toil pursue, / And Truth's broad mirror spread to every view; / Awake to Reason's voice the savage mind, / Check Error's force, and civilize mankind."
preview | full record— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)
Date: 1787
"But does not Reason's faithful mirror she / The future prospect of distress and woe,/ And point what dangers modern softness wait / In the sad tale of Rome's declining state?"
preview | full record— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)
Date: 1788
"Seize! seize! the glowing images that pass / Like transient shadows o'er the mimic glass!"
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)
Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789
"Oh! I'm sick to the soul, to see Music alone, / Stretch her negligent length on the Drama's gay throne; / Where Muses more honor'd by Wisdom should sit, / To adorn the heart's mirror, and fashion our wit"
preview | full record— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)
Date: 1790
"And o'er Imagination's gloomy glass, / Despair's mute sons like Banquo's visions pass"
preview | full record— Merry, Robert (1755-1798)
Date: w. 1780, 1792
"Blest be the tribute of those tears, that start / From Friendship's eye, the mirrors of the heart."
preview | full record— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)
Date: 1793
"To paint th' ecstatic tumult of their souls, / The rapture of deliverance from death / Thus threatenting, and the mutual joys of safety, / Description aims not, for too weak her power, / Too faint her colours: diffident she points / To fancy's faithful mirror, and then drops / Her useless pencil."
preview | full record— Kett, Henry (1761-1825)