Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"'Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold, / Two faithful needles, from the informing touch / Of the same parent-stone, together drew / Its mystic virtue, and at first conspir'd / With fatal impulse quivering to the pole."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"So all things which have life aspire to God, / The sun of being, boundless, unimpair'd, / Center of souls!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1746

"As the grave sage, who studies to explore, / Some cause phaenonimous--unknown before, / With patience waits--revolving in his mind / The vast events--attending human kind, / Till some propitious star his soul inspires, / And gives the great solution he requires."

— Ruffhead, James

Date: 1754

"Say what strange sympathy in kindred souls, / (Strong as the fam'd attraction of the poles,) / Governs the lover with magnetic force, / Inspires the passion, and directs its course"

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: January, 1754; 1791

"[B]affled here / By his omnipotence Philosophy / Slowly her thoughts inadequate revolves, / And stands, with all his circling wonders round her, / Like heavy Saturn in th'etherial space / Begirt with an inexplicable ring."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1788

"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...

— 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."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789

"Far nobler prize my heart constrains, / Yielding to soft controul; / Far other beauty binds in chains / The magnet of my soul."

— Colvill, Robert (d. 1788)

Date: 1796

"Some hurt themselves by flippant WIT, / As too much GAS, balloons will split;-- / With buoyant splendour, up they rise, / The spirit bursts, the bubble dies."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"The effect [of wit on the mind] is strong,--because it's odd, / Like fire electric from a clod; / Or when fix'd air puts out a light, / Tho' vital makes it blaze more bright."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)