Date: 1797

"Check they the torpid influence of Despair, / Or bid warm Health re-animate the breast; / Where Hope's soft visions have no longer part, / And whose sad inmate--is a broken heart?"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"The base controul / Of petty despots in their pedant reign / Already hast thou felt;--and high disdain / Of Tyrants is imprinted on thy soul."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"Man, lost in ignorance and toil, / Becomes associate to the soil, / And his heart hardens like his native rock."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"Grief, the most fatal of the heart's diseases, / Soon teaches, who it fastens on, to die."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"Fear thee, O Death!--Or hug the chains that bind / To joyless, cheerless life, her sick, reluctant mind?"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1799, 1806

"O Gold! thou pois'nous dross, whose subtile pow'r / Can change men's souls, or captive take the will."

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1799, 1806

Gold "tipp'st the leaves of fancy's fairest flow'r / With glitt'ring drops: it feels the numbing spell / Creep through each fibre slow; while ev'ry ill / Of sordid mis'ry blossoms to devour"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1800

"So the schemes / Rais'd by fond Hope in youth's unclouded morn, / While sanguine youth enjoys delusive dreams, / Experience withers; till scarce one remains / Flattering the languid heart, where only Reason reigns!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)