Date: 1743

"Love still nourishes [the heart] with a temperate Heat, as the Sun doth our Climate; and Beauties rise after Beauties in the one, just as Fruits do in the other"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1745

"The Duties of his Day / Were all discharg'd, and gratefully enjoy'd / It's noblest Blessings; calm, as Evening Skies, / Was his pure Mind, and lighted up with Hopes / That open Heaven; when, for his last long Sleep / Timely prepar'd, a Lassitude of Life, / A pleasing Weariness of mortal Joy, / F...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1755

"Thou, superior to the Frowns / Of Fate, can'st pour thy Sunshine o'er the Soul, / And brighten Woe to Rapture!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Clouds, all the while have hung upon thy brow, / Nor broke, nor parted by one gleam of joy."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Darkly a project peers upon my mind, / Like the red moon when rising in the east, / Cross'd and divided by strange-colour'd clouds."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1759

"Support our virtue:--kindle in our souls / A ray of your divine enthusiasm; / Such as inflames the patriot's breast, and lifts / Th'impassion'd mind to that sublime of virtue, / That even on the rack it feels the good, / Which in a single hour it works for millions, / And leaves the legacy to af...

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1759

"A more than midnight gloom involves my soul."

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1759

"He smiles contempt; as if some inward joy, / Like the sun lab'ring in a night of clouds, / Shot forth its glad'ning unresisted beams, / Chearing the face of woe."

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1761

"At length I wake to Reason and to thee; / Thy well-lov'd form, like the all-glorious Sun / After a gloom of horror dawns upon me, / And day breaks in on my benighted soul."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1787

"It is enough--my scruples are at an end--my prejudices, like clouds before the rising sun, vanish before the lights of your superior reason."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)