Date: 1773

"While others,--consecrate to higher aims, / Whose hallowed bosoms glow with purer flames, / Love in their heart, persuasion in their tongue,-- / With words of peace shall charm the listening throng, / Draw the dread veil that wraps the' eternal throne, / And launch our souls into the bright unkn...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773, 1806

"Truth's unclouded ray" may strike the soul and melt Suspicion away

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1773, 1894-1895

"The human Spirit, when it burns and shines, / 'Lamp of Jehovah" Solomon defines. / Now, as a Vessel, to contain the Whole, / This 'Lamp' denotes the Body, Oil the Soul"

— Byrom, John (1692-1763)

Date: 1774

"From sense abstracted, some, with arduous flight, / Explore the realms of intellectual light."

— Scott, Mary [later Taylor] (1751/2-1793)

Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"O, Montagu! forgive me, if I sing / red with the milder ray / Of soft humanity, and kindness bland: / So wide its influence, that the bright beams / Reach the low vale where mists of ignorance lodge, / Strike on the innate spark which lay immersed, / Thick-clogged, and almost quenched in total n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1788

"Since there is no convexity in MIND, / Why are thy genial beams to parts confined?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"'Tis ever Nature's gen'rous view; / Great minds should noble ends pursue; / As the clear sun-beam, when most bright, / Warms, in proportion to its light."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Ye! who can selfish cares forego, / To pity those which others know; / As Light, that from its centre strays, / To glad all Nature with its rays; / Oh! ease the pangs ye stoop to share, / And rescue millions from despair!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)