Date: 1716

"My ravish'd Heart strait like a Bird of Prey / Stoop'd at the Lure; And thus my early Youth / Was by vain Thoughts bewildred and mis-led."

— Monck [née Molesworth], Mary (1677?-1715)

Date: March 13, 1727

"Must these like empty shadows pass, / Or forms reflected from a glass? / Or mere chimeras in the mind, / That fly, and leave no marks behind?"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1731

"Here Arlington, thy mighty Mind disdains / Inferior Earth, and breaks its servile Chains, / Aloft on Contemplations Wings you rise, / Scorn all below and mingle with the Skies."

— Boyse, Samuel (1708-1749)

Date: 1755

The "busy Statesman's mind" may grow putrid on the throne of power so that "Fresh vices spring up ev'ry hour; / As in dead corses serpents breed, / And loathsome, on corruption feed"

— Derrick, Samuel (1724-1769)

Date: 1767, 1778

"Envy in courts and cottages will dwell, / Nay climb to heaven itself, tho' born in hell: / In every living bosom lurks this pest, / But reigns unrival'd in the human breast; / On reason's throne usurps a thorny part, / And plants a thousand daggers in the heart."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1767, 1778

"Here science, like the sun, see radiant rise, / With intellectual beam, through mental skies, / To gild, to gladden all th' improving space, / With taste, with candor, learning, sense, and grace; / To light up all the mind's remotest cells, / Where fancy fledges, and where genius dwells."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1773, 1778

"The Passions there embody'd throng, / On mental Pinions, swift, and strong, / In Robes array'd of various Fire."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)