Date: 1755, 1771

"Were it not so, the soul, all dead and lost, / Like the tall cliff beneath the' impassive frost, / Form'd for no end, and impotent to please, / Would lie inactive on the couch of ease: / And, heedless of proud fame's immortal lay, / Sleep all her dull divinity away."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"And yet, let but a zephyr's breath begin/ To stir the latent excellence within-- / Waked in that moment's elemental strife, / Impassion'd genius feels the breath of life; / The' expanding heart delights to leap and glow, / The pulse to kindle, and the tear to flow."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"Strong and more strong the light celestial shines, / Each thought ennobles, and each sense refines, / Till all the soul, full opening to the flame, / Exalts to virtue what she felt for fame."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The passions then all human virtue give, / Fill up the soul, and lend her strength to live."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"But he whose active, unencumber'd mind / Leaves this low earth and all its mists behind, / Fond in a pure unclouded sky to glow, / Like the bright orb that rises on the Po, / O'er half the globe with steady splendour shines, / And ripens virtues as it ripens mines."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul / Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal; / Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame, / The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame, / Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye / A glance, an image, of a future sky."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"Tasteless of all that virtue gives to please, / For thought too active, and too mad for ease, / From wish to wish in life's mad vortex toss'd, / For ever struggling, and for ever lost; / He scorns religion, though her seraphs call, / And lives in rapture, or not lives at all."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"Passions, like colours, have their strength and ease, / Those too insipid, and too gaudy these."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"Contrast them, curb them, spread them, or confine, / Ennoble these, and those forbid to shine; / With cooler shades ambition's fire allay, / And mildly melt the pomp of pride away; / Her rainbow robe from vanity remove, / Each pulse congenial with the' informing mind, / Each action station'd in ...

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)