Date: 1762
"To me how tasteless ev’ry Scene of Joy, / The vacant Heart by happy Impulse feels / While mine, which Thoughts of genuine Grief employ, / From chearful Crowds to drear Retirement steals."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1764, 1773
"Restore thy dear idea to my breast, / The rich deposit shall the shrine secure."
preview | full record— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)
Date: 1755, 1771
"The passions then all human virtue give, / Fill up the soul, and lend her strength to live."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: 1773
"My heart in Delia is so fully blest, / It has no room to lodge another joy."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1773
"Hail to pleasure's frolic train; / Hail to fancy's golden reign; / Festive mirth, and laughter wild, / Free and sportful as the child; / Hope with eager sparkling eyes, / And easy faith, and fond surprise: / Let these, in fairy colours drest, / Forever share my careless breast; / Then, tho' wise...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: w. c. 1751, 1775
"And see, with these is holy Friendship found, / With chrystal bosom open to the sight; / Her gentle hand fhall close the recent wound, / And fill the vacant heart with calm delight."
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: 1782
"With Asiatic vices stored thy mind, / But left their virtues and thine own behind, / And, having truck'd thy soul, brought home the fee, / To tempt the poor to sell himself to thee?"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1784
"Blest is yon shepherd, on the turf reclin'd, / Who on the varied clouds which float above / Lies idly gazing--while his vacant mind / Pours out some tale antique of rural love!"
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
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...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
"Then thro' her stores shall active mem'ry rove."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)