Date: 1777

"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."

— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)

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."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1787

"What force can free the mind that Vice has chain'd, / Or clear the current if the fountain's stain'd?"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1787

"Her's [Gaul's] was the earliest boast with lenient care / To form soft Courtesy's attractive air; / Throw o'er the willing mind Politeness' chains, / And raise that empire which she yet maintains."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1787

"The increasing powers of ripening sense pervade / The gloomy stillness of the cloister's shade, / Destroy the bonds that Reason's force confin'd, / And burst the fetters that enchain'd the mind."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1788

"But still the vigour of my soul I keep, / And its keen anger burst the bonds of sleep."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1788

"Since our most wicked act / Is not our sin, and our religious awe / Delusion, if that strong Necessity / Chains up our will."

— Crowe, William (1745-1829)

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 ...

— Crowe, William (1745-1829)

Date: 1789?

"Shorn of her beams and fetter'd by her thought, / The fallen nymph the caves of Sadness sought."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"Its anodyne powers [Miss George's singing] the sick'ning make cheery, / And tears off the chain from the mind of the weary."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)