Date: 1766
Earthly pleasures are "Not meant by heav'n to perish unenjoy'd, / Or pass'd with scorn by superstitious pride; / Nor, grov'ling here, the brutal soul to chain, / Where happiness is still alloy'd with pain; / But there the soaring intellect to fix, / Where pain or sorrow ne'er with transport mix."
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1767
"Yet, to the stoic apathy estrang'd, / Thou canst, with steady courage, probe to th' quick / The wound thou mean'st to cure; thou canst reprove / With all the sweet persuasion of esteem: / And give a momentary pang, to free / The worthy mind from its ignoble chain."
preview | full record— Dodd, William (1729-1777)
Date: w. prior to April 1770; 1785, 1837, 1875
"Not yet contented with his boundless sway, / Which all perforce must outwardly obey, / He thought to throw his chain upon the mind; / Nor would he leave conjecture unconfined."
preview | full record— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)
Date: 1777
"Is there no Senator, whose soul disdains / To bear about his mind the golden chains / Of base Corruption?"
preview | full record— Combe, William (1742 -1823)
Date: 1777
"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."
preview | full record— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)
Date: 1777, 1810
"Here soars the poet, all, impassioned mind, / And leaves his earthly clog behind."
preview | full record— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Date: November 9, 1779
"Thus, conscience freed from ev'ry clog, / Mahometans eat up the hog."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1781
"My head and ears confus'd, I find / One cannot here relax the Mind, / In vain she strives to slip her chains, / Law, Law, through all these regions reigns; / So back to Chambers I return, / More Patience, and more Law, to learn."
preview | full record— Keate, George (1729-1797)
Date: 1781
"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)
Date: 1782
"Disdainful of those little arts that bind, / In slavish trammels, the inferior mind, / No stage finesse her action shall disgrace, / To trick a generous audience out of praise; / But Truth, and Nature, shall still plead her cause, / And win the tribute of a just applause."
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)