Date: 1744

"What slave, unbless'd, who from to-morrow's dawn / Expects an empire? He forgets his chain, / And, throned in thought, his absent sceptre waves."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Are there on earth (let me not call them men) / Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts; / Unconscious as the mountain of its ore; / Or rock, of its inestimable gem? / When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish, these / Shall know their treasure; treasure then no more.

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"The aspiring Soul, / Ardent and tremulous, like flame, ascends; / Zeal and Humility her wings to heaven."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Here, dormant matter waits a call to life; / Half-life, half-death, join there: here, life and sense; / There, sense from reason steals a glimmering ray; / Reason shines out in man."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"A world, where Lust of Pleasure, Grandeur, Gold, / Three demons that divide its realms between them, / With strokes alternate buffet to and fro / Man's restless heart, their sport, their flying ball; / Till with the giddy circle sick and tired, / It pants for peace, and drops into despair."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"Such is the world Lorenzo's wisdom wooes, / And on its thorny pillow seeks repose; / A pillow which, like opiates ill-prepared, / Intoxicates, but not composes; fills / The visionary mind with gay chimeras, / All the wild trash of sleep, without the rest; / What unfeign'd travail, and what dream...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"All, more or less, against each other dash, / To mutual hurt by gusts of passion driven, / And suffering more from Folly than from Fate."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"These claims to joy (if mortals joy might claim) / Will cost him many a sigh, till time, and pains, / From the slow mistress of this school, Experience, / And her assistant, pausing, pale Distrust, / Purchase a dear-bought clue to lead his youth / Through serpentine obliquities of life, / And th...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"Thus, a strange kind of cursed necessity / Brings down the sterling temper of his soul, / By base alloy, to bear the current stamp, / Below call'd Wisdom; sinks him into safety; / And brands him into credit with the world; / Where specious titles dignify disgrace, / And Nature's injuries are art...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"Though various are the tempers of mankind, / Pleasure's gay family hold all in chains."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)