Date: 1737
""Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1741
"I [the mind] did but step out, on some weighty affairs, / To visit last night, my good friends in the stars, / When, before I was got half as high as the moon, / You despatched Pain and Languor to hurry me down; / Vi & Armis they seized me, in midst of my flight, / And shut me in caverns as dark...
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1742
"At home a stranger, / Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, / And wondering at her own."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1743
"Where roll my thoughts / To rest from wonders? Other wonders rise; / And strike where'er they roll: my soul is caught; / Heaven's sovereign blessings, clustering from the cross, / Rush on her in a throng, and close her round, / The prisoner of amaze!"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: w. May, 1756; 1761
"For these, if I forget my patron's praise, / While bright ideas dance upon my mind, / Ne'er may these eyes behold auspicious days, / May friends prove faithless, and the Muse unkind."
preview | full record— Fawkes, Francis (1720-1777)
Date: November, 1769?
"And give me back my heart again, / And oh! instruct the roving guest, / No more to wander from my breast."
preview | full record— Shaw, Cuthbert (1738-1771)
Date: 1775
"With thee among the haunted groves / The lovely sorc'ress Fancy roves, / O let me find her here!"
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: 1785
"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: February, 1798
"And what (I said) tho' blasphemy's loud scream / With that sweet music of deliv'rance strove; / Tho' all the fierce and drunken passions wove / A dance more wild than ever maniac's dream; / Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, / The sun was rising, tho' ye hid his light!"
preview | full record— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)