Date: 1785

"Oft as I trod my native wilds alone, / Strong gusts of thought would rise, but rise to die; / The portals of the swelling soul ne'er oped / By liberal converse, rude ideas strove / Awhile for vent, but found it not, and died."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

An infant soul must be lifted to Jehovah's throne because "[T]he ductile mind, / Pliant as wax, shall wear the mould you give"

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

" No glossy diction e'er can aid the thought, / First stamp'd in ignorance, with error fraught."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1787

"And life's first moment stamp'd my soul immortal."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1795

"The passions are the wings of spirit. Cold tranquillity the grave of thought"

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1795

"The mind of man, when disturbed, is a chaos, 'without form and void.' His ideas take no shape, or the formation he tries at swiftly dies."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1795

"Millions of chimeras floated on my imagination all were rejected in speedy succession ere they became old enough to take the colour of reason; yet fancy will be busy till we are no more."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1796

"These feeble sounds / Give not my soul's rich meaning; or my thought / Rises too boldly o'er the human line / Of alphabets (misused)."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)