Date: 1785

Jealousy's monsters may hurl "frighted Reason from her throne, / And with her all the charities that wait / To grace her virtuous Court"

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

Date: 1785

"Sov'reigns are subjects to the master part; / The ruling passion still maintains its post, / Monarch o'er monarchs, and the mortal's lost."

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

Date: 1785

"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"

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

Date: 1785

"'Twixt shame and passion floats the struggling mind, / To Virtue now, and now to vice inclin'd, / This frowns refusal, that persuades to yield, / Till Reason falls, and Passion takes the field."

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

Date: 1788

"When sovereign Reason from her throne is hurl'd, / And with her all the subject senses whirl'd, / From sweet HUMANITY, the nurse of grief, / Even thy deep woes, O Phrenzy! find relief."

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

Date: 1788

Humanity "Assists thy roving fancy in its flight, / To crown thy airy sallies with delight."

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

Date: 1788

"An healing balm to thy warp'd sense she brings, / Till from her softness magic comfort springs, / And joys which reason with a frown denies, / Her tender pity with a smile supplies."

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

Date: 1788

"Ah! think not, WHITE, the Muse from fancy brings / Those woes, for Hist'ry sanctions what she sings, / Her bloody Annals still does Truth unfold, / Stain'd with the victims of soul-spotting gold."

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

Date: 1788

"Fires not the social blood within your veins, / To make the White Man feel the Negro's pains? / Beat not your hearts the miscreant arms to bind, / Of the proud Christian with a savage mind?"

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

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)