Date: 1788

"Who for such perishable gaudes would put / A yoke upon his free unbroken spirit, / And gall himself with trammels and the rubs / Of this world's business; so he might stand clear / Of judgment and the tax of idleness / In that dread audit, when his mortal hours / (Which now with soft and silent ...

— Crowe, William (1745-1829)

Date: 1790

"But let me not thus pond'ring, gaping, stand-- / But, lo, I am not at my own command: / Bed, bosom, kiss, embraces, storm my brains, / And, lawless tyrants, bind my will in chains."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1793

"Exulting Reason from her bondage springs, / Claims Heav'n's wide range, and spreads her eagle wings; / While Superstition, lodg'd with bats and owls, / With Horror, and the hopeless maniac, howls."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1802

"Paint courts, whose sorceries, too seducing bind, / In chains, in shameful slavish chains, the mind; / Courts, where unblushing Flatt'ry finds the way, / And casts a cloud o'er Truth's eternal ray."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1810

"Years pass away--let us suppose them past, / Th' accomplish'd nymph for freedom looks at last; / All hardships over, which a school contains, / The spirit's bondage and the body's pains; / Where teachers make the heartless, trembling set / Of pupils suffer for their own regret."

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)