Date: 1772-1781
What availed the songs of a "mighty mind, / With inward light irradiate, mirror-like / Receiv'd, and to mankind with ray reflex / The sov'reign Planter's primal work display'd?"
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)
Date: 1772, 1810
"He spoke: a sudden cloud his senses stole, / And thickening darkness swam o'er all his soul"
preview | full record— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)
Date: 1773
"While others,--consecrate to higher aims, / Whose hallowed bosoms glow with purer flames, / Love in their heart, persuasion in their tongue,-- / With words of peace shall charm the listening throng, / Draw the dread veil that wraps the' eternal throne, / And launch our souls into the bright unkn...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1773, 1806
"Truth's unclouded ray" may strike the soul and melt Suspicion away
preview | full record— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)
Date: 1773, 1894-1895
"The human Spirit, when it burns and shines, / 'Lamp of Jehovah" Solomon defines. / Now, as a Vessel, to contain the Whole, / This 'Lamp' denotes the Body, Oil the Soul"
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
Date: 1774
"From sense abstracted, some, with arduous flight, / Explore the realms of intellectual light."
preview | full record— Scott, Mary [later Taylor] (1751/2-1793)
Date: 1767, 1778
"The dawning mind would drink each classic ray, / And pants impatient for a brighter day"
preview | full record— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)
Date: 1767, 1778
"Here science, like the sun, see radiant rise, / With intellectual beam, through mental skies, / To gild, to gladden all th' improving space, / With taste, with candor, learning, sense, and grace; / To light up all the mind's remotest cells, / Where fancy fledges, and where genius dwells."
preview | full record— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)
Date: 1785
"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)