Date: 1781
"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)
Date: 1782
"Pleasure, the rambling Bird! the painted Jay! / May snatch the richest seeds of Verse away; / Or Indolence, the worm that winds with art / Thro' the close texture of the cleanest heart, / May, if they haply have begun to shoot, / With partial mischief wound the sick'ning root; / Or Avarice, the ...
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
Reveries are "flimsy webs that break as soon as wrought" and don't attain "to the dignity of thought"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1782
The mind may slumber sweetly in vice's snares, her "polish'd neck" bent beneath tyranny's "usurp'd command"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1782
"His passions tamed and all at his control, / How perfect the composure of his soul!"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1782
"Peace of mind" is a delightful guest that may make its "downy nest" in a "sad heart"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1786
"Like caterpillars dangling under trees / By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, / Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace / The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, / While every worm industriously weaves / And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves; / So numerous are the follie...
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1787
"Your heavy fat, I will maintain, / Is perfect birdlime of the brain; / And, as to goldfinches the birdlime clings-- / Fat holds ideas by the legs and wings."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1787
"Fat flattens the most brilliant thoughts, / Like the buff-stop on harpsichords, or spinets-- / Muffling their pretty little tuneful throats, / That would have chirp'd away like linnets."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1788
"What glittering adders lurk to sting the mind!"
preview | full record— Richardson, Joseph (1755-1803)