Date: 1782

Homer's "Song arose / As the good Parson's quiet Sermon grows; / Who, while his easy thoughts no pressure find / From hosts of images that crowd the mind, / First calmly settles on some moral text, / Then creeps--from one division--to the next"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Disdainful of those little arts that bind, / In slavish trammels, the inferior mind, / No stage finesse her action shall disgrace, / To trick a generous audience out of praise; / But Truth, and Nature, shall still plead her cause, / And win the tribute of a just applause."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1782

"These foes [birds, worms, mildew] combin'd (and with them who may cope?) / Are not more hostile to the Farmer's hope, / Than Life's keen passions to that lighter grain / Of Fancy, scatter'd o'er the infant brain."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Pleasure, the rambling Bird! the painted Jay! / May snatch the richest seeds of Verse away; / Or Indolence, the worm that winds with art / Thro' the close texture of the cleanest heart, / May, if they haply have begun to shoot, / With partial mischief wound the sick'ning root; / Or Avarice, the ...

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"By pure exalted Sentiment she draws / From Judgment's steady voice no light applause."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"The noble thought, that fir'd a Grecian soul, / Keeps o'er a British mind its firm control."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"To captivate admiring Fancy's eyes, / She bids celestial decorations rise; / But, as a playful and capricious child / Frowns at the splendid toy on which it smiled; / So wayward Fancy now with scorn surveys / Those specious Miracles she lov'd to praise; / Still fond of change, and fickle Fashion...

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"As woodbine weds the plants within her reach, / Rough elm, or smooth-grain'd ash, or glossy beech, / In spiral rings ascends the trunk, and lays / Her golden tassels on the leafy sprays, / But does a mischief while she lends a grace, / Straitening its growth by such a strict embrace, / So love t...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"Rough annoyance" may rankle in the mind

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

Reveries are "flimsy webs that break as soon as wrought" and don't attain "to the dignity of thought"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)