Date: 1788

"Thou, who, for noble faults like these, too cold, / Whose vices n'er aspire, but stoop to gold, / That groveling passion of the sordid breast, / Like Aaron's serpent swallowing up the rest."

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

Date: 1788

"Thou Christian emperor in whose generous breast / The light of pure devotion shone impress'd, / That sacred light descending from above, / An emanation of coelestial love; / With speed of light'ning spread the lambent ray, / Till realms of darkness kindled into day; / From God himself the spark ...

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

Date: 1802

One must leave improvements of the "vast domain" and "prop the throne of reason e're it falls."

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

Date: 1802

"Far other ruins henceforth be your care: /Search for the failing towers of human kind, / And save that noblest edifice, the mind"

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

Date: 1802

In England "There, still may sense and reason have a throne!"

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

Date: 1802

"The veriest carl that nature ever made, / Heir to the flail, the wallet, and the spade, / Boasts in fair freedom's isle a free-born mind, / And sighs to share the birth-right of his kind."

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

Date: 1802

"Yet laws there are, whose power each being feels, Impress'd on every heart with Nature's seals."

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

Date: 1802

"Blest mirror! which can thus, with magic pow'r, / Give the rank weed the fragrance of the flow'r; / And from deformities,--without, within, / Spots in the mind, or specks upon the skin-- / Can all that's good, and all that's fair reflect, / And change to beauty, every dark defect."

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

Date: 1803

"Yet laws there are, whose power each being feels, Impress'd on every heart with Nature's seals."

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

Date: 1803

"The polish'd links that form the social chain, / For ages still to ages may remain / Nor snapt by rage, nor undermin'd by art, / If well the rivets join in every part; / But if those links that would the peasant bind, / Gall his chaf'd body, and corrode his mind, / The poor man's iron, and the r...

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