Date: 1741

"Says Body to Mind, ''Tis amazing to see, / We're so nearly related yet never agree, / But lead a most wrangling strange sort of life, / As great plagues to each other as husband and wife.'"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"The best room in my house you [the mind] have seized for your own, / And turned the whole tenement quite upside down, / While you hourly call in a disorderly crew / Of vagabond rogues, who have nothing to do / But to run in and out, hurry-scurry, and keep / Such a horrible uproar, I can't get to...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"There's my kitchen sometimes is as empty as sound, / I call for my servants, not one's to be found: / They are all sent out on your ladyship's errand, / To fetch some more riotous guests in, I warrant!"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"Poor Mind, who heard all with extreme moderation, / Thought it now time to speak, and make her allegation: / ''Tis I that, methinks, have most cause to complain, / Who am cramped and confined like a slave in a chain.'"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"I [the mind] did but step out, on some weighty affairs, / To visit last night, my good friends in the stars, / When, before I was got half as high as the moon, / You despatched Pain and Languor to hurry me down; / Vi & Armis they seized me, in midst of my flight, / And shut me in caverns as dark...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"'I've a friend,' answers Mind, 'who, though slow, is yet sure, / And will rid me at last of your insolent power: / Will knock down your walls, the whole fabric demolish, / And at once your strong holds and my slavery abolish: / And while in your dust your dull ruins decay, / I'll snap off my cha...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1746; December 17, 1747 [actually January, 1748]

"O Pallas! Queen of ev’ry art / That glads the sense, or mends the heart, / Blest source of purer joys: / In ev’ry form of beauty bright, / That captivates the mental sight, / With pleasure and surprize!"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1746; December 17, 1747 [actually January, 1748]

"To me thy better gifts impart, / Each moral beauty of the heart / By studious thought refin’d: / For Wealth, the smiles of glad Content, / For Pow’r, it samplest, best extent, / An empire o’er my mind."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1746; December 17, 1747 [actually January, 1748]

"The Passions ceas’d their loud alarms, / And Virtue’s soft persuasive charms / O’er all their senses stole."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1746; December 17, 1747 [actually January, 1748]

"No more to fabled names confin’d, / To Thee! Supreme, all-perfect mind, / My thoughts direct their flight: / Wisdom’s thy gift, and all her force / From Thee deriv’d, unchanging source / Of intellectual light!"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)