Date: 1767, 1784

"So, when on some weighty truth / A beam of heav'nly light its lustre sheds, / To Reason's eye it looks supremely fair."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1767, 1784

"The curious structure of these visual orbs, / The windows of the mind; substance how clear, / Aqueous, or crystalline! through which the soul, / As thro' a glass, all outward things surveys."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

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?"

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

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: 1773

"Think'st thou, had Fancy's mirror struck his sight, / And brought thy too degenerate deeds to light; / Had shewn thee curst to such a vicious race, / Whose very breath contaminates the place: / How would his manly heart with grief have died / T'have seen this fatal barrier to his pride?"

— Anonymous

Date: 1775

"Before the queen an oval mirror stands, / The curious labor of her active hands; / Ample its size; of wondrous texture wrought; / With pow'r endu'd, surpassing human thought."

— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)

Date: 1775

"On this deceptive mirror FANCY gaz'd; / For in its field she saw whate'er she pleas'd: / Whate'er in thought her fertile brain design'd, / (The varying labours of her changeful mind,) / Whate'er she wills, within its orb she spies, / True to her wish the airy visions rise."

— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)

Date: 1781

Fancy may never "view a shape of lovelier kind / In the bright mirror of her Shakespeare's mind."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

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: 1785

The mind may be "enlighten'd from above"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)