Date: 1726, 1753

"Boundless desire, aw'd hope, and doubtful joy, / Stormy, by turns, the veering heart employ; / Sick'ning, in fancy's sun-shine, now, we faint, / And licence wounds us deeper, than restraint."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1730

"Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds / Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, / Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; / Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, / In swifter sallies darting to the brain; / Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, / Bright ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1731

"Secondly, Neither doth every Involuntary Phantasm, or such as the Soul is not Conscious to it self to have purposely excited or raised up within it self, seem to be a Sensation or Perception of a thing, as existing without us; for there may be Straggling Phantasms, which come into the Mind we kn...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: January 29, 1737

"Nay, the Light of Reason, which we so much boast of, what is it but a Dark-Lanthorn, which just serves to keep us from running our Nose against a Post, perhaps; but is no more able to lead us out of the dark Mists of Error and Ignorance, in which we are lost, than an Ignis fatuus would be to co...

— Dodsley, Robert (1703-1764)

Date: 1738, 1792

"But soon a beam, emissive from above, / Shed mental day, and touch'd the heart with love; / Gave jealous rage to know Divine Controul, / And ruled the tempest rising in the soul."

— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)

Date: 1742

"Through chinks, styled organs, dim Life peeps at light; / Death bursts the' involving cloud, and all is day; / All eye, all ear, the disembodied power."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Still spread a healing mist before the mind; / And lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light, / Secure us kindly in our native night."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1744

"In Lust's dominion, and in Passion's storm, / Truth's system broken, scatter'd fragments lay: / (As light in chaos, glimmering through the gloom)."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Vehement and swift / As lightening fires the aromatic shade / In Æthiopian fields, the stripling felt / Her inspiration catch his fervid soul, / And starting from his languor thus exclaim'd."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"The Duties of his Day / Were all discharg'd, and gratefully enjoy'd / It's noblest Blessings; calm, as Evening Skies, / Was his pure Mind, and lighted up with Hopes / That open Heaven; when, for his last long Sleep / Timely prepar'd, a Lassitude of Life, / A pleasing Weariness of mortal Joy, / F...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)