Date: 1743
"Darkness has more divinity for me: / It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul / To settle on herself, our point supreme! / There lies our theatre; there sits our judge."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"For to the brutes / Perception and the transient boons of sense / Hath fate imparted: but to man alone / Of sublunary beings was it given / Each fleeting impulse on the sensual powers / At leisure to review; with equal eye / To scan the passion of the stricken nerve / Or the vague object strikin...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1761, 1790
"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)
Date: 1755, 1771
"For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul / Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal; / Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame, / The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame, / Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye / A glance, an image, of a future sky."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: January 1, 1779
"There [to Heaven's Regions] when the soul, in search of purer day, / Loos'd from mortality's impris'ning clay / Shall swifter than the forked lightning dart."
preview | full record— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)
Date: 1781, 1791
"Hence rash Belief! may thy wild thoughts again / Ne'er thro the cells of busy fancy rove!"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)