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)
Date: 1788
"Hence at each sound imagination glows; / Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows; / Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong and clear, / And fills the impassioned heart and lulls the harmonious ear."
preview | full record— Collins, William (1721-1759)
Date: 1788
"Well-tutor'd Learning, from his books / Dismiss'd with grave, not haughty looks, / Their order on his shelves exact, / Not more harmonious or compact / Than that, to which he keeps confined / The various treasures of his mind."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: w. 1788, 1810
"Thee, Bard morose, / Churlish amid thy fancy's golden stores, / Thee will I teach, censorious as thou art, / What is not Virtue."
preview | full record— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)
Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789
"So poignant a mind in a vulgariz'd shell,/ Resembles a bucket of gold in a well; / 'Tis like Ceylon's best spice in a rude-fashion'd jar, / Or Comedy coop'd in a Dutch man of war."
preview | full record— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)