Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"Oft as I trod my native wilds alone, / Strong gusts of thought would rise, but rise to die; / The portals of the swelling soul ne'er oped / By liberal converse, rude ideas strove / Awhile for vent, but found it not, and died."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"An heav'nly mind / May be indiff'rent to her house of clay, / And slight the hovel as beneath her care"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

A body "queint in its deportment and attire" may (not) lodge "an heav'nly mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

When Reason dwells in the heart it is "Wisdom's cell"

— Lovibond, Edward (bap. 1723, d. 1775)

Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792

"Thus a large dumpling to its cell confin'd / (A very apt allusion to my mind)."

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

Date: 1792

"Much hist'ry in those tell-tale orbs we read! / What though no bigger than a button hole, / Yet what a wondrous window to the soul!"

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

Date: 1792 [1794]

"Your head's an auction-room of gauze and ruffles"

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)

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?"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)