Date: 1773

"How bright the scene to Fancy's eye appears, / Through the long perspective of distant years, / When this, this little group their country calls / From academic shades and learned halls, / To fix her laws, her spirit to sustain, / And light up glory through her wide domain!"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"O Wisdom! if thy soft controul / Can soothe the sickness of the soul, / Can bid the warring passions cease, / And breathe the calm of tender peace;-- / Wisdom! I bless thy gentle sway, / And ever, ever will obey."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

The soul contains "An embryo of God, a spark of fire divine / Which must burn on for ages."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"But if thou com'st with frown austere / To nurse the brood of care and fear; / To bid our sweetest passions die, / And leave us in their room a sigh; / Or if thine aspect stern have power / To wither each poor transient flower, / That cheers the pilgrimage of woe, / And dry the springs whence ho...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

Toil and danger "feed and ripen minds" (not "meats and drinks" or "balmy airs, and vernal suns and showers")

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1784

"Ah! season of delight!--could aught be found / To soothe awhile the tortur'd bosom's pain, / Of Sorrow's rankling shaft to cure the wound, / And bring life's first delusions once again, / 'Twere surely met in thee!."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"The hollow winds of Night, no more / In wild, unequal cadence pour / On musing Fancy's wakeful ear, / The groan of agony severe / From yon dark vessel, which contains / The wretch new bound in hopeless chains; / Whose soul with keener anguish bleeds, / As AFRIC's less'ning shore recedes."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

Slavery "speculates with skill refin'd, / How deep a wound will stab the mind; / How far the spirit can endure / Calamity, that hopes no cure."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)