Date: 1782
"These foes [birds, worms, mildew] combin'd (and with them who may cope?) / Are not more hostile to the Farmer's hope, / Than Life's keen passions to that lighter grain / Of Fancy, scatter'd o'er the infant brain."
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
"Pleasure, the rambling Bird! the painted Jay! / May snatch the richest seeds of Verse away; / Or Indolence, the worm that winds with art / Thro' the close texture of the cleanest heart, / May, if they haply have begun to shoot, / With partial mischief wound the sick'ning root; / Or Avarice, the ...
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
"As woodbine weds the plants within her reach, / Rough elm, or smooth-grain'd ash, or glossy beech, / In spiral rings ascends the trunk, and lays / Her golden tassels on the leafy sprays, / But does a mischief while she lends a grace, / Straitening its growth by such a strict embrace, / So love t...
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1782
"Happiest soil" may be found "in the serenest minds"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1782
"Peace be to those (such peace as earth can give,) / Who live in pleasure, dead even while they live; / Born capable indeed of heavenly truth, / But down to latest age from earliest youth, / Their mind a wilderness through want of care, / The plough of wisdom never entering there."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1784, 1804
"When this is the case the hedge (to our feelings) is broken down, and we lie exposed to every temptation; as says the Psalmist--'Why hast thou broken down her hedges, so that all they that pass by the way do pluck her?' Psal. lxxx. 12"
preview | full record— Huntington, William (1745-1813)
Date: 1785
Prejudice may take "deeper root" in "men of stronger minds"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
Learning may grow beneath Disciplines care, "a thriving and vigorous plant"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
Rural scenes may "nurse / The growing seeds of wisdom"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
Virtue is like a "lowly creeping, modest and yet fair" plant that thrives most "where little seen"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)