Date: 1682

"O play not with my Heart, as Children do / With some poor Bird, which while they love, they shew. / One over-weening grasp of life bereaves, / And in a moment all the joy deceives."

— Coppinger, Matthew (fl. 1682)

Date: 1687

The will may spur a lover on

— Ayres, Philip (1638-1712)

Date: 1682, 1683, 1709

"His Love's the very Bird-lime of his Brain, / And pulls some Part away with every Strain."

— Gould, Robert (b. 1660?, d. in or before 1709)

Date: 1743

"My heart and flesh cry out for God: / There would I fix my soul's abode, / As birds that in the altars nest."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1767

"Man in this world, Sir, may be compared to a hackney-coach upon a stand; continually subject to be drawn by his unruly appetites, on one foolish jaunt or another; but you will say, if his appetites are horses, which as it were drag him along, reason is the coachman to rule those horses--But, Sir...

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1773

"Know, lovely virgin, thy deluding art / Hath lodg'd a thousand scorpions in my breast:"

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

Date: w. 1789, 1804

"While Vanity unveils her whiffling flags, / Her glittering trinkets, and her tawdry rags-- / Spreads spangled nets, and fills her philter'd bowl, / To fix each Sense, and fascinate the Soul-- / Her birdlime twigs contrived with such sly Art, / That while they tangle thoughts, they trap the heart...

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)