Date: 1773

"But soon, alas! this holy calm is broke; / My soul submits to wear her wonted yoke; / With shackled pinions strives to soar in vain, / And mingles with the dross of earth again."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies, / Till some lov'd objects strikes her wand'ring eyes, / Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, / And soft captivity involves the mind."

— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)

Date: w. 1763, 1776

"By mercy prompted his correcting hand / Inflicts the stroke of salutary pain, / To check tyrannic Passions's wild demand, / And free our Reason from it's slavish chain."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1777

"Is there no Senator, whose soul disdains / To bear about his mind the golden chains / Of base Corruption?"

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1777

"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."

— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)

Date: 1781

"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1787

"What force can free the mind that Vice has chain'd, / Or clear the current if the fountain's stain'd?"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1787

"Her's [Gaul's] was the earliest boast with lenient care / To form soft Courtesy's attractive air; / Throw o'er the willing mind Politeness' chains, / And raise that empire which she yet maintains."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1787

"The increasing powers of ripening sense pervade / The gloomy stillness of the cloister's shade, / Destroy the bonds that Reason's force confin'd, / And burst the fetters that enchain'd the mind."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1788

"But still the vigour of my soul I keep, / And its keen anger burst the bonds of sleep."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)