Date: 1779
"Sorrow may well possess the mind / That feeds where thorns and thistles grow"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1779
"Not Man, but thriftless Nature, be accused, / Who to seductions left our minds a prey-- / --Nay more, who doth herself ensnare us; / Hath hung us round with senses exquisite, / Hath planted in our hearts resistless passions, / The first to weaken, and the last to war / On poor, defenceless, nake...
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1779
"My mind, with wild contending passions torn, / Now, like a hart by worrying dogs forsook, / Sinks into apathy."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1779
"Mean time, Editha send; some secret grief / Preys on her mind, and fain I would relieve / Her bosom'd anguish."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1779, 1781
"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seld...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"The good and evil of Eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adoration."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1780
"Behold the frantick passion how it burns, / Like a wild beast breaks every tie, / Laughs at the Priest; the Legislator spurns, / And gives both heaven and earth the lye!"
preview | full record— Stevenson, John Hall (1717-1785)
Date: 1780
"Tread down Thy foes, with power control / The beast and devil in my soul."
preview | full record— Wesley, John and Charles
Date: 1781
"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)