Date: 1730

"And when with these the serious thought is foil'd, / We, shifting for relief, would play the shapes / Of frolic fancy; and incessant form / Unnumber'd pictures, fleeting o'er the brain / Yet rapid still renew'd, and pour'd immense / Into the mind, unbounded without space."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds / Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, / Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; / Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, / In swifter sallies darting to the brain; / Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, / Bright ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Down from her Chariot light-wing'd Fancy flew, / And o'er him, loose, her Starry Mantle threw."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"Turn we a moment Fancy's rapid flight / To vigorous soils, and climes of fair extent; / Where, by the potent sun elated high, / The vineyard swells refulgent on the day; / Spreads o'er the vale; or up the mountain climbs, / Profuse; and drinks amid the sunny rocks, / From cliff to cliff increase...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"It is hard for a reader, who has not rolled this thought in his own mind, to follow in such an abstracted speculation."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"The generous Ashley thine, the friend of man; / Who scan'd his nature with a brother's eye, / His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim, / To touch the finer movements of the mind, / And with the moral beauty charm the heart."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1731

"A thousand Wonders, / A thousand Mysteries, at once reveal'd, / Come rushing on my Memory!"

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1731

"Cou'd Reason's Force / Tear the unlicens'd Image from my Heart, / Or, patient, leave to Time, th'unhasten'd Means, / To bless my fierce Desires; Who knows what Chance, / Or Death, or Thought, or Woman's changeful Will, / Or my own conquer'd Wishes, may produce."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1732

"But the free-thinker, with a vigorous flight of thought, breaks through those airy springes, and asserts his original independency."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)