Date: 1760?
The Grace teaches "On the Subject when to be / Grave or gay, reserv'd or free: / The speaking Air, th' impassion'd Eye, / The living Soul of Symmetry; / And that soft Sympathy that binds / In magic Chains congenial Minds."
preview | full record— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)
Date: 1762
"Ne’er did thy Voice assume a Master’s Pow’r, / Nor force Assent to what thy Precepts taught; / But bid my independent Spirit soar, / In all the Freedom of unfett’red Thought"
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1763
"Doth Virtue in thy bosom brighter glow, / Or from a Spring more pure doth Action flow? / Is not thy Soul bound with those very chains / Which shackle us, or is that SELF, which reigns / O'er Kings and Beggars, which in all we see / Most strong and sov'reign, only weak in Thee?"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1766
Earthly pleasures are "Not meant by heav'n to perish unenjoy'd, / Or pass'd with scorn by superstitious pride; / Nor, grov'ling here, the brutal soul to chain, / Where happiness is still alloy'd with pain; / But there the soaring intellect to fix, / Where pain or sorrow ne'er with transport mix."
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1767
"Yet, to the stoic apathy estrang'd, / Thou canst, with steady courage, probe to th' quick / The wound thou mean'st to cure; thou canst reprove / With all the sweet persuasion of esteem: / And give a momentary pang, to free / The worthy mind from its ignoble chain."
preview | full record— Dodd, William (1729-1777)
Date: 1773
"But soon, alas! this holy calm is broke; / My soul submits to wear her wonted yoke; / With shackled pinions strives to soar in vain, / And mingles with the dross of earth again."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: w. 1763, 1776
"By mercy prompted his correcting hand / Inflicts the stroke of salutary pain, / To check tyrannic Passions's wild demand, / And free our Reason from it's slavish chain."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1777
"Is there no Senator, whose soul disdains / To bear about his mind the golden chains / Of base Corruption?"
preview | full record— Combe, William (1742 -1823)
Date: 1777
"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."
preview | full record— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)
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)