Date: 1703, 1718
"Darkness, like that in Central Caves beneath, / Like that, which spreads the lonesome Walks of Death, / Where never Ray one Inroad made, / The Rebels Mind did swift invade."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1709, 1810
"I've a mighty part within / That the world hath never seen, / Rich as Eden's happy ground, / And with choicer plenty crown'd: / Here on all the shining boughs / Knowledge fair and useful grows; / On the same young flow'ry tree / All the seasons you may see; / Notions in the bloom of light, / Jus...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: w. c. 1709, 1711
"As on the land while here the Ocean gains, / In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; / Thus in the soul while memory prevails, / The solid pow'r of understanding fails; / Where beams of warm imagination play, / The memory's soft figures melt away."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1712
"Quick, as a darted Beam of Light, they [the spirits] go, / Thro' diff'rent Paths to diff'rent Organs flow, / Whence they reflect as swiftly to the Brain, / To give it Pleasure, or to give it Pain."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1724
"When all at once / A thousand anxious Thoughts that slept by Day, / Swarm'd in my Brain, 'till it resembled Hell, / Hot, dark and hot: my sick Imagination, / Assisted by the Shades of Night, would give / A gloomy turn to each Idea there."
preview | full record— Jeffreys, George (1678-1755)
Date: 1734 [1735?]
"Deaf to Advice, or taking Wrong for Right, / They boldly blunder on in Reason's Spite; / And under clearer Light's obscure Pretence / Live the Antipodes of common Sense."
preview | full record— Paget, Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget (1689-1742)
Date: 1741
"I [the mind] did but step out, on some weighty affairs, / To visit last night, my good friends in the stars, / When, before I was got half as high as the moon, / You despatched Pain and Languor to hurry me down; / Vi & Armis they seized me, in midst of my flight, / And shut me in caverns as dark...
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1743
"I'll range the plenteous intellectual field; / And gather every thought of sovereign power, / To chase the moral maladies of man; / Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies, / Though natives of this coarse penurious soil; / Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing, / Refined, exalte...
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Oft misled / By that bland light, the young unpractis'd views / Of reason wander through a fatal road, / Far from their native aim."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)