Date: 1697

"What inward Whips my tortur'd Bowels tear? / Fierce Vipers twist their Spires about my Heart, / And Bite, and Sting, and Wound with deadly smart. / With more than Atlas weight my Soul's opprest, / And raging Tempests beat along my breast: / Corroding Flames eat thro' my burning veins, / And all ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1712

"Strong as the Winds, and sprightly as the Light? / She [the mind] moves unweary'd, as the active Fire, / And, like the Flame, her Flights to Heav'n aspire."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: Monday, July 13, 1724

"Oh, Jealousy!--All other Storms are Calms / To Thee!--Thou Conflagration of the Soul!"

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1726, 1753

"But I have err'd; and, with delirious aim, / Would picture motion, and imprison flame. / He, who can light'ning's flash, to colours, bind, / May paint love's influence, on the burning mind."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1742

"A soul immortal, spending all her fires, / Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness, / Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd, / At aught this scene can threaten, or indulge, / Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, / To waft a feather, or to drown a fly."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1746, 1753

"Bid the face, red'ning, warm'd idea take, / Strait, the soul's wildfires all obstruction break: / Stung, by inflicted thought's imagin'd pain, / Hard heave the muscles, rolling eye-balls strain: / 'Twixt the clos'd teeth, indignantly, supprest, / Or, storm-like, loud, out pours th' unguarded bre...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1755

"THE SHOCK OF RECEIVING MY OWN LETTER did not excite a sudden Gust of unwarrantable Passion, but prey'd upon my Heart with the slow and eating Fire of Distraction and Despair, 'till it ended in a Fever, which now remains upon my Spirits; and which, I fear, I shall find a difficult Task to overcome."

— Charke [née Cibber; other married name Sacheverell], Charlotte [alias Mr Brown] (1713-1760)

Date: 1755

"Thy Words have shot like Lightning through my Frame; / And all my Soul's on Fire!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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)