Date: 1742

"The soul is on a rack; the rack of rest, / To souls most adverse; action all their joy."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Not the gross act alone employs her pen; / She reconnoitres Fancy's airy band, / A watchful foe! the formidable spy, / Listening, o'erhears the whispers of our camp; / Our dawning purposes of heart explores, / And steals our embryos of iniquity."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire; / In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar / Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust; / Dismounted every great and glorious aim; / Embruted every faculty divine; / Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Warnings point out our danger; gnomons, time: / As these are useless when the sun is set; / So those, but when more glorious Reason shines. / Reason should judge in all; in Reason's eye, / That sedentary shadow travels hard."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Thoughts disentangle, passing o'er the lip; / Clean runs the thread; if not, 'tis thrown away / Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song; / Song, fashionably fruitless; such as stains / The fancy, and unhallow'd passion fires; / Chiming her saints to Cytherea's fane."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Good sense will stagnate. Thoughts shut up want air, / And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"'Tis thought's exchange which, like the' alternate push / Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum, / And defecates the student's standing pool."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Celestial Happiness, whene'er she stoops / To visit earth, one shrine the goddess finds, / And one alone, to make her sweet amends / For absent heaven,--the bosom of a friend; / Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft, / Each other's pillow to repose divine."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades, / Which wait the revolution in our hearts?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"The thought of death shall, like a god, inspire."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)