Date: 1726

"The Year, yet pleasing, but declining fast, / Soft, o'er the secret Soul, in gentle Gales, / A Philosophic Melancholly breathes, / And bears the swelling Thought aloft to Heaven."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Emblem instructive of the virtuous man, / Who keeps his temper'd mind serene and pure, / And every passion aptly harmonized, / Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"'Fear not,' he said, 'Sweet innocence! thou stranger to offence, / And inward storm!'"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"Can / The stormy Passions in his Bosom rowl, / While every Gale is Peace, and every Grove / Is Melody?"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

Strait the fierce Storm involves his Mind anew, / Flames thro' the Nerves, and boils along the Veins; / While anxious Doubt distracts the tortur'd Heart; / For even the sad Assurance of his Fears / Were Heaven to what he feels."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds / Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, / Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; / Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, / In swifter sallies darting to the brain; / Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, / Bright ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"He, when young Spring protrudes the bursting germs, / Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale / Into his freshen'd soul; her genial hours / He full enjoys; and not a beauty blows, / And not an opening blossom breathes in vain."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"While he, from all the stormy passions free / That restless men involve, hears, and but hears, / At distance safe, the human tempest roar, / Wrapp'd close in conscious peace."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"What pity then / Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth / Her [the soul's] tender blossom; choak the streams of life, / And blast her spring!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

Man was ordained to "To chase each partial purpose from his breast; / And through the mists of passion and of sense, / And through the tossing tide of chance and pain, / To hold his course unfaultering, while the voice / Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent / Of nature, calls him to his high ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)