Date: 1789

"I rejoiced in spirit, making melody in my heart to the God of all my mercies, Now my whole wish was to be dissolved, and to be with Christ—but, alas! I must wait mine appointed time."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1790

"His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderati...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1798

"We'll frame the measure of our souls, / They shall be tuned to love"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1799

"They thought and acted in different but not discordant keys."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1799

"I never cried in my life, sine I was knee-high, but curse me if I ever felt in better tune for the business than just then."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: October 4, 1802

"O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me / What this strong music in the soul may be!"

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1805

"Alas! when ev'ry Muse is fled, / How wretched He who writes for bread! / Who, when the joyous years are flown, / And Reason totters on her throne, / And Fancy fails, and Nature tires, / And Fame herself no more inspires, / And ev'n the sweet return of Spring / No more can make the Poet sing, / T...

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1807

"The music in my heart I bore / Long after it was heard no more."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1816

"Since my young days of passion--joy, or pain-- / Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string-- / And both may jar."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1817

Milton in his "latter days" was "poor, sick, blind, slandered, persecuted [...] yet still listening to the music of his thoughts."

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)