Date: 1752, 1791
"Know too, the joys of sense controul, / And clog the motions of the soul; / Forbid her pinions to aspire, / Damp and impair her native fire: / And sure as Sense (that tyrant!) reigns, / She holds the empress, Soul, in chains."
preview | full record— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)
Date: 1753
"He combats Passion, rooted in the Soul, / Whose Powers at once delight ye and controul; / Whose Magic Bondage each lost Slave enjoys, / Nor wishes Freedom, tho' the Spell destroys."
preview | full record— Moore, Edward (1712-1757)
Date: 1754
"But I could no longer divert myself by Proteus-like putting on that character which best suited my fancy; for I was now chain'd down and enslaved to the most rigid of all tyrants, an uncontroulable passion."
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1758
"Fortune is an evil Chain to the Body; and Vice, to the Soul. For he whose Body is unbound, and whose Soul is chained, is a Slave. On the contrary, he whose Body is chained, and his Soul unbound, is free."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1761
"I have been a slave to a hopeless passion too long; I am now resolved to struggle with my chains: you, Madam, must assist me in breaking them intirely; and I make no doubt but that time, joined to my own efforts, and aided by your sweetness of disposition, your tenderness, and admirable sense, w...
preview | full record— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)
Date: 1762, 1868
"Hasten, Lord, the day of rest / From this indwelling sin, / Vindicate Thy church oppress'd, / And still enslaved within; / Burst our bonds, and let us go / From every thought of evil freed, / Pure in heart, and saints below, / And like our sinless Head."
preview | full record— Wesley, John and Charles
Date: 1763
"Doth Virtue in thy bosom brighter glow, / Or from a Spring more pure doth Action flow? / Is not thy Soul bound with those very chains / Which shackle us, or is that SELF, which reigns / O'er Kings and Beggars, which in all we see / Most strong and sov'reign, only weak in Thee?"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: w. 1764, published 1820
"Yet, why repine? What, though by bonds confined, / Should bonds enslave the vigour of the mind?"
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1766
Love "leaves us not the liberty of choice; it commands in the beginning, as a master, and, reigns, afterwards, as a tyrant, till we are accustomed to its chains, by length of time; or, till they are broken by the efforts of powerful reason, or, the caprice of continued vexation."
preview | full record— Trusler, John (1735-1820)
Date: 1766
"Far beyond the bonds of meaning / Fancy flies, a Fairy queen!"
preview | full record— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)