Date: 1762

"If by the Day's illusive Scenes misled, / My erring Soul from Virtue’s Path has stray'd; / Snar'd by example, or by Passion warm'd, / Some false Delight my giddy Sense has charm'd, / My calmer Thoughts the wretched Choice reprove, / And my best Hopes are center'd in thy Love."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"When a train of ideas is very familiar to the mind, they often follow one another in the memory without any laborious recollection, and so as to arise almost instantaneously and mechanically; as in writing, singing, &c. the traces between them being worn like beaten roads."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1785

"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1791, 1806

"Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: November 10, 1813

"I by no means rank poetry or poets high in the scale of intellect. This may look like affectation, but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruptions prevents an earthquake."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: w. 1798-1800, 1814

"Not Chaos, not / The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, / Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out / By help of dreams--can breed such fear and awe / As fall upon us often when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-- / My haunt, and the main region of my song."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1820

"On a poet's lips I slept / Dreaming like a love-adept / In the sound his breathing kept; / Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, / But feeds on the aëreal kisses / Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)