Date: 1770
"Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, / The soul adopts and owns their firstborn sway; / Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, / Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1770
"Excursive thought" may "Stand still a moment, and by reason taught / Judge rightly, with strict eye thyself survey"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)
Date: 1778
"But, as an author of great fame / (I can't just recollect his name) / Has somewhere said, who seeks to bind / By force, or fraud, a woman's mind, / With locks, and bolts, and bars, and chains, / But gets his labour for his pains."
preview | full record— Moore, Sir John Henry (1756-1780)
Date: 1784
"Ah! season of delight!--could aught be found / To soothe awhile the tortur'd bosom's pain, / Of Sorrow's rankling shaft to cure the wound, / And bring life's first delusions once again, / 'Twere surely met in thee!."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1788
"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1791, 1806
"Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)