Date: 1780

"Our hearts more free from Faction's Weeds we feel, / But they have loft the Flower of Patriot Zeal"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Can we then deem that in those happier lands, / Where every vital energy expands; / Where Thought, the golden harvest of the mind, / Springs into rich luxuriance, unconfin'd; / That in such soils, with mental weeds o'ergrown, / The seeds of Poesy were thinly sown?"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

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."

— 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 ...

— 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...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"Happiest soil" may be found "in the serenest minds"

— 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."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Prejudice may take "deeper root" in "men of stronger minds"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Learning may grow beneath Disciplines care, "a thriving and vigorous plant"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Rural scenes may "nurse / The growing seeds of wisdom"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)