Date: 1742
"Thoughts disentangle, passing o'er the lip; / Clean runs the thread; if not, 'tis thrown away / Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song; / Song, fashionably fruitless; such as stains / The fancy, and unhallow'd passion fires; / Chiming her saints to Cytherea's fane."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1742
"How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round / In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun, / Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er / With soft conceit of endless comfort here, / Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744
"Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all, / Our more than vitals spin (if no regard / To great futurity) in curious webs / Of subtle thought, and exquisite design, / (Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a fly, / The momentary buzz of vain renown, / A name, a mortal immortality?"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Passion's fierce illapse / Rouzes the mind's whole fabric; with supplies / Of daily impulse keeps the elastic powers / Intensely poiz'd, and polishes anew / By that collision all the fine machine: / Else rust would rise, and foulness, by degrees / Incumbering, choak at last what heaven design'd ...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"From the wise be far / Such gross unhallow'd pride; nor needs my song / Descend so low; but rather now unfold, / If human thought could reach, or words unfold, / By what mysterious fabric of the mind, / The deep-felt joys and harmony of sound / Result from airy motion; and from shape / The lovel...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1777
"I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room."
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)
Date: 1785
"Threads of politic and shrewd design" that charge the mind with meanings may be (or not, as it were) disentangled from "the puzzled skein"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1796
"WIT on all points is out of season, / It's use is to embroider reason."
preview | full record— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)
Date: 1796
"Good sense like cloth, the ground-work place, / And then sow on your Wit and lace."
preview | full record— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)