Date: 1786
"Add to this, that, whenever you sell the liberty of a man, you have the power only of alluding to the body: the mind cannot be confined or bound: it will be free, though its mansion be beset with chains."
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: 1792
"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, / Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain."
preview | full record— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)
Date: 1793
"For what is sleep, but temporary death; / Sealing up all the windows of the soul, / And binding ev'ry thought in torpid chains?"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1796, 1806
"Ambition!--not that emulative zeal Which wings the tow'ring souls of godlike men! / But bold, oppressive, self-created pow'r, / That, trampling o'er the barrier of the laws, / And scattering wide the tender shoots of pity, / Strikes at the root of reason, and confines / Nature itself in bondage!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: November 12, 1816
"But what land, that poet ever sung, or enchanter swayed, can equal that, which, when the slave's foot touches, he becomes free--his prisoned soul starts forth, his swelling nerves burst the chain that enthrall'd him, and, in his own strength he stands, as the rock he treads on, majestic and secu...
preview | full record— Morton, Thomas (1764-1838)