Date: 1761, 1765

"A taste, improv'd by Education, finds / Pleasures where none appear to ruder minds; / Scenes, where the croud but few attractions see, / Affect it in an exquisite degree: / As telescopes, the finer ground, convey / More striking beauties by the visual ray; / Or magnets, as prepar'd the mor...

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1772

"The Eye, that Orb of Light, which shews / The Features of the Mind, / Distinct, as faithful Mirrours yield / The Forms of human Kind."

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)

Date: 1773

"Soaring though air to find the bright abode, / Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God, / We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, / And leave the rolling universe behind; / From star to star the mental optics rove, / Measure the skies, and range the realms above."

— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)

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 / ...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1788

There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"And o'er Imagination's gloomy glass, / Despair's mute sons like Banquo's visions pass"

— Merry, Robert (1755-1798)

Date: 1796

"No drug, nor juice of all the acid tribe, / Can move the Tints, which Glassy Pores imbibe; / So no mean prejudice, no bribes, nor art, / Efface th' Impressions of an Upright Heart."

— Bishop, Samuel (1731-1795)