Date: w. 1736, 1749
"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"
preview | full record— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)
Date: 1786
"Add to this, that, whenever you sell the liberty of a man, you have the power only of alluding to the body: the mind cannot be confined or bound: it will be free, though its mansion be beset with chains."
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: 1792
"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, / Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain."
preview | full record— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)
Date: 1793
"For what is sleep, but temporary death; / Sealing up all the windows of the soul, / And binding ev'ry thought in torpid chains?"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1796, 1806
"Ambition!--not that emulative zeal Which wings the tow'ring souls of godlike men! / But bold, oppressive, self-created pow'r, / That, trampling o'er the barrier of the laws, / And scattering wide the tender shoots of pity, / Strikes at the root of reason, and confines / Nature itself in bondage!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1842
"Regret came shivering through my veins, / And bound my tongue in iron chains; / My soul in prison seem'd to be / And ever must if torn from thee."
preview | full record— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)