Date: 1728

"Ye Fairy Prospects then, / Ye Beds of Roses, and ye Bowers of Joy, / Farewell! Ye Gleamings of departing Peace, / Shine out your last! The yellow-tinging Plague / Internal Vision taints, and in a Night / Of livid Gloom Imagination wraps."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"From what rich Fountain flow / Those ripening Beams of intellectual Day?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1728

"How Reason's Lamp burns with incessant Toil, / To light the Judgment, and to guide the Will?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1729

"Reason exerts her pure, celestial, Rays, / To guide our Steps thro' Errors weary Maze: / But upstart Passions mount her rightful Throne, / And blindly push our vanquish'd Judgment on."

— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)

Date: 1730

"No light the darkness of that mind invades, / Where Chaos rules, enshrin'd in genuine Shades;"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1730

A "mimic gleam of transient light" may break through the gloom of dullness "and then they think they write"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1730

"Whether we send our Reason's piercing Rays / Beneath the Great, unbounded Deep, / Where Storms and Tempests sleep, / Whether unrein'd Imagination strays / Thro' the black, Howling Desart's pathless Ways, / The Deep and Howling Wilderness declare / The Omnipresent Godhead there."

— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)

Date: 1730

"Whether amid the Gloom we stray, / And send our Intellectual Ray / Up to the pure, cærulean Plains on high, / There all the Glories of the Sky, / As round the liquid Space / They run their bright, ætherial Race."

— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)

Date: 1730

"As thus we talk'd, / Our hearts would burn within us, would inhale / That portion of divinity, that ray / Of purest Heaven, which lights the glorious flame / Of patriots, and of heroes."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds / Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, / Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; / Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, / In swifter sallies darting to the brain; / Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, / Bright ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)