Date: 1770
"But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. / As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, / Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, / Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, / Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1771, 1776
"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1755, 1771
"Were it not so, the soul, all dead and lost, / Like the tall cliff beneath the' impassive frost, / Form'd for no end, and impotent to please, / Would lie inactive on the couch of ease: / And, heedless of proud fame's immortal lay, / Sleep all her dull divinity away."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: 1771, 1816
"Thus man [like a cataract], the harpy of his own content, / With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent, / Wild in the rapid vortex whirls the soul, / Till reason bursts, impatient of controul."
preview | full record— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)
Date: 1771, 1816
"But now the wavy conflict tends to peace, / And jarring elements their tumults cease, / Placid below, the stream obsequious flows, / And silent wonders how fell Discord grows./ So the calm mind reviews her tortur'd state, / Resuming reason for the cool debate."
preview | full record— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)
Date: w. January 24, 1789
"Your dear idea reigns, and reigns alone; / Each thought intoxicated homage yields, / And riots wanton in forbidden fields."
preview | full record— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)
Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827
"When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth"
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827
"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1792
"But souls in common are a dreary waste, / By brambles, thistles, barb'rous docks disgrac'd; / That need the ploughshare, harrow, and the fire--"
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)