Date: 1788

"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

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: 1788

"His breast, where nobler passions burn, / In honest poverty, would spurn / That wealth, Oppression can bestow, / And scorn to wound a fetter'd foe."

— 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: 1788

"Or, if where savage habit steels / The vulgar mind, one bosom feels / The sacred claim of helpless woe-- / If Pity in that soil can grow; / Pity! whose tender impulse darts / With keenest force on nobler hearts; / As flames that purest essence boast, / Rise highest when they tremble most."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Ah, not alone of power possest / To check each virtue of the breast; / As when the numbing frosts arise / The charm of vegetation dies."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"His sway the harden'd bosom leads / To Cruelty's remorseless deeds; / Like the blue lightning when it springs / With fury on its livid wings, / Darts to its goal with baleful force, / Nor heeds that ruin marks its course."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"On Eloquence, prevailing art! / Whose force can chain the list'ning heart; / The throb of Sympathy inspire, / And kindle every great desire; / With magic energy controul / And reign the sov'reign of the soul!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"When sovereign Reason from her throne is hurl'd, / And with her all the subject senses whirl'd, / From sweet HUMANITY, the nurse of grief, / Even thy deep woes, O Phrenzy! find relief."

— 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."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)