Date: 1792
"Around [Religion's] emerald throne / The passions tremble at her awful beck-- ' Her ministers as flaming fire,' to waft / Into the mortal bosom the pure spark / Æthereal, that refines our thought"
preview | full record— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)
Date: 1793
"For what is sleep, but temporary death; / Sealing up all the windows of the soul, / And binding ev'ry thought in torpid chains?"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1793
"But, most of all, [the mind is subject] to that lov'd voice, whose thrill, / Rushing impetuous through each throbbing vein, / Dilates the wond'ring mind, and frees its pow'rs / From the cold chains of icy apathy / To all the vast extremes of bliss and pain!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1793
"In fancy's mirror dreadful scenes appear, / Design'd by doubt, and magnified by fear, / There some gay female, frivolous and vain, / Artfully forms the captivating chain; / Makes him the slave of passion and caprice, / Perverts his principles, and wounds his peace."
preview | full record— Burrell [née Raymond, later Clay], Sophia, Lady Burrell (1750-1802)
Date: 1793
"To paint th' ecstatic tumult of their souls, / The rapture of deliverance from death / Thus threatenting, and the mutual joys of safety, / Description aims not, for too weak her power, / Too faint her colours: diffident she points / To fancy's faithful mirror, and then drops / Her useless pencil."
preview | full record— Kett, Henry (1761-1825)
Date: 1795
France "spurning base controul ... pluck'd the iron from her wounded soul [and] O'erthrew her proud Bastile, as with a charm"
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1795
"Disdaining even the thought of flight or fear, / His life, his soul, by steady valor steel'd."
preview | full record— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)
Date: 1796
"My sons, if rich, might wield / The fan emblaz'd with Psyche and her boy / O'er some enchantress, whose contagious sighs / Would blast the best impression of their souls."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1796
"Behold the wretch, who from that cavern [a madhouse?--"Sad habitation of the lost, insane"] flies, / Hell in his heart, destruction in his eyes"
preview | full record— Merry, Robert (1755-1798)
Date: 1796
"He ponders on the world,--abhors the whole; / While black as night, his gloomy thought expands / O'er life's perplexing paths, and barren sands"
preview | full record— Merry, Robert (1755-1798)