Date: w. 1739, 1762
Melancholy's "transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1765
"Let those, whose arts to fatal paths betray, / The soul with passion's gloom tempestuous blind, / And snatch from Reason's ken th'auspicious ray / Truth darts from Heaven to guide th'exploring mind."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1771, 1776
"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1782
One may have a mind "Not yet so blank, or fashionably blind, / But now and then perhaps a feeble ray /Of distant wisdom shoots across his way"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1793
" When painful truths invade the mind, / Ev'n wisdom wishes to be blind, / And hates th' officious ray."
preview | full record— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)
Date: 1798 [1797?]
"If with big meaning pregnant Fancy teem'd; / If o'er each thought, the light of Genius beam'd; / If quick Perception new ideas found, / And lent to verse new luxuries of sound [...]"
preview | full record— Jones, Jenkin [Captain] (fl. 1798)