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
"Seiz'd in thought / On fancy's wild and roving wing I sail, / From the green borders of the peopled earth, / And the pale moon, her duteous fair attendant; / From solitary Mars; from the vast orb / Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk / Dances in ether like the lightest leaf; / To the dim verge,...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1773
"But now my soul unus'd to stretch her powers / In flight so daring, drops her weary wing, / And seeks again the known accustom'd spot, / Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams, / A mansion fair and spacious for its guest, / And full replete with wonders."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
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: 1776
"Oft let remembrance sooth his mind / With dreams of former days, / When in the lap of Peace reclined / He framed his infant lays; / When Fancy roved at large, nor Care / Nor cold Distrust alarm'd, / Nor Envy with malignant glare / His simple youth had harm'd."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1781, 1791
"Hence rash Belief! may thy wild thoughts again / Ne'er thro the cells of busy fancy rove!"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)
Date: 1784
"Thy piercing thought / Unaided saw each movement of the mind, / As skilful artists view the small machine, / The secret springs and nice dependencies, / And to thy mimic scenes, by fancy wrought / To such a wond'rous shape, th'impassion'd breast / In floods of grief, or peals of laughter bow'd, ...
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1785
"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
"'Twixt shame and passion floats the struggling mind, / To Virtue now, and now to vice inclin'd, / This frowns refusal, that persuades to yield, / Till Reason falls, and Passion takes the field."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1788
Humanity "Assists thy roving fancy in its flight, / To crown thy airy sallies with delight."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)