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...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1742

"At home a stranger, / Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, / And wondering at her own."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Where roll my thoughts / To rest from wonders? Other wonders rise; / And strike where'er they roll: my soul is caught; / Heaven's sovereign blessings, clustering from the cross, / Rush on her in a throng, and close her round, / The prisoner of amaze!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1746

"He framed a melting lay, to try her heart; / And, if an infant passion struggled there, / To call that passion forth."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: w. May, 1756; 1761

"For these, if I forget my patron's praise, / While bright ideas dance upon my mind, / Ne'er may these eyes behold auspicious days, / May friends prove faithless, and the Muse unkind."

— Fawkes, Francis (1720-1777)

Date: 1761, 1790

"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

Date: 1767

"Thus it appears to be in every respect a proper counterbalance to the RAMBLING and VOLATILE power of IMAGINATION. The one, perpetually attempting to soar, is apt to deviate into the mazes of error; while the other arrests the wanderer in its vagrant course, and compels it to follow the path of n...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: November, 1769?

"And give me back my heart again, / And oh! instruct the roving guest, / No more to wander from my breast."

— Shaw, Cuthbert (1738-1771)

Date: 1774

"Association could not recal the idea of the design, in order to bring back fancy when it has wandered from it, if judgment did not inform us that it had wandered, by perceiving the tendency of the ideas which it has suggested. The finest imagination, totally destitute of assistance from judgment...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"The imagination resembles a person attached to home, who cannot without reluctance undertake a long journey, but can with pleasure make short excursions, returning home from each, and thence setting out anew."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)