Date: 1751, 1777
"There seems here a necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others are not spectacles entirely indifferent to us; but that the view of the former, whether in its causes or effects, like sun-shine or the prospect of well-cultivated plains, (to carry our pretensions no higher), co...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757
"Clouds, all the while have hung upon thy brow, / Nor broke, nor parted by one gleam of joy."
preview | full record— Home, John (1722-1808)
Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757
"Darkly a project peers upon my mind, / Like the red moon when rising in the east, / Cross'd and divided by strange-colour'd clouds."
preview | full record— Home, John (1722-1808)
Date: 1759
"He smiles contempt; as if some inward joy, / Like the sun lab'ring in a night of clouds, / Shot forth its glad'ning unresisted beams, / Chearing the face of woe."
preview | full record— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)
Date: 1762
"The soul of Nathos was sad, like the sun in the day of mist, when his face is watry and dim."
preview | full record— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)
Date: 1765
"Let those, whose arts to fatal paths betray, / The soul with passion's gloom tempestuous blind, / And snatch from Reason's ken th'auspicious ray / Truth darts from Heaven to guide th'exploring mind."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1767, 1784
"But if foul Passion, or distemper'd Pride, / Impede its search, or Phrenzy seize the brain, / Then Ignorance a gloomy darkness spreads, / Or Superstition, with mishapen forms, / Erects its savage empire in the mind."
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
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 gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, / 'And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast, / 'Henceforth no earthly hope with heaven shall share / 'This heart, where peace serenely shines at last."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
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)