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?"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1793
"But, most of all, [the mind is subject] to that lov'd voice, whose thrill, / Rushing impetuous through each throbbing vein, / Dilates the wond'ring mind, and frees its pow'rs / From the cold chains of icy apathy / To all the vast extremes of bliss and pain!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1794
"Each man of sense, you'll find disdain / To drag coquetry's galling chain. / 'Tis prudence, truth, good sense, my dear, / That makes the lamp of love burn clear; / These are the silken cords, that bind / The Lover's, and the Husband's mind."
preview | full record— Pointon, Priscilla [AKA Priscilla Pickering] (c. 1740-1801)
Date: 1796
"The chains of care fall off my pensive mind, / When through the winds your spirit hails me."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1801
"My soul her bondage ill endures; / I pant for liberty like yours."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1803
"The polish'd links that form the social chain, / For ages still to ages may remain / Nor snapt by rage, nor undermin'd by art, / If well the rivets join in every part; / But if those links that would the peasant bind, / Gall his chaf'd body, and corrode his mind, / The poor man's iron, and the r...
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: c. 1804-1811, 1818
"Urizen lay in darkness & solitude, in chains of the mind lock'd up."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1807-8
"Much it behoves us to compute the strength / Of him, whose ruin we would work, of him, / Who vaunts himself the legate of Jehovah, / And by that title keeps our souls in thrall / And bondage worse than what our limbs endur'd / Under the yoke of Pharaoh."
preview | full record— Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824)
Date: 1808
"With active force the comprehensive mind / Breaks custom's chains and prejudice's ties, / And wide in sportive curves unbounded flies."
preview | full record— Grant [née MacVicar], Anne (1755-1838)
Date: 1808
"Draw close those ties, so fine and yet so strong, / That gently lead the willing soul along, / Nor crush beneath oppression's iron rod / The kindred image of the parent God; / Nor think that rigour's galling chains can bind / The native force of the superior mind."
preview | full record— Grant [née MacVicar], Anne (1755-1838)