Date: 1788
"Strong Genius, from whose forge of thought / Forms rise, to quick perfection wrought"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1780, 1788
"Authority! unfeeling power, / Whose iron heart can coldly doom / The Debtor, dragg'd from Pleasure's bower, / To sicken in the dungeon's gloom."
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1788
"So have I heard / The captive finch, in narrow cage confin'd, / Charm all his woe away with cheerful song, / Which might have melted e'en a heart of steel / To give him liberty"
preview | full record— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)
Date: 1788
"With horns, and tail, and hoofs that make folks start; / And in my breast a millstone for a heart!"
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1788
"When the sharp iron wounds his inmost soul, / And his strain'd eyes in burning anguish roll; / Will the parch'd negro find, ere he expire, / No pain in hunger, and no heat in fire?"
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1788
"Not so the slave; oppress'd with secret care, / He sinks the hapless victim of despair; / Or, doom'd to torments that might even move / The steely heart, and melt it into love; / Till worn with anguish, with'ring in his bloom, / He falls an early tenant of the tomb!"
preview | full record— Falconar, Maria (b. 1771-) and Harriet (b. 1774-)
Date: 1788
"For Virtue, with divine controul, / Collects the various powers of soul; / And lends, from her unsullied source, / The gems of thought their purest force."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"True courage in the unconquer'd soul / Yields to Compassion's mild controul; / As, the resisting frame of steel / The magnet's secret force can feel."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"Or, if where savage habit steels / The vulgar mind, one bosom feels / The sacred claim of helpless woe-- / If Pity in that soil can grow; / Pity! whose tender impulse darts / With keenest force on nobler hearts; / As flames that purest essence boast, / Rise highest when they tremble most."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"Ah! think not, WHITE, the Muse from fancy brings / Those woes, for Hist'ry sanctions what she sings, / Her bloody Annals still does Truth unfold, / Stain'd with the victims of soul-spotting gold."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)