Date: 1760
"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1760, 1761
"Reason, collected in herself, disdains / The slavish yoke of arbitrary chains"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1772
"My Brain's disturb'd; alas! alas! I rave; / What can I do? a poor forsaken Slave! / Like Birds, that spend their little idle Rage, / And, fruitless, mourn, indignant of their Cage, / From Thought to Thought, my fluttering Spirits rove, / Betray'd to Bondage, and, ah! lost to Love."
preview | full record— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811) [Editor]
Date: 1781
"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)
Date: 1788
"Who for such perishable gaudes would put / A yoke upon his free unbroken spirit, / And gall himself with trammels and the rubs / Of this world's business; so he might stand clear / Of judgment and the tax of idleness / In that dread audit, when his mortal hours / (Which now with soft and silent ...
preview | full record— Crowe, William (1745-1829)
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)