Date: 1700, 1702

"A Beam of Hope, / Strikes thro' my Soul, like the first Infant Light, / That glanc'd upon the Chaos."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1700, 1702

"And all fires those that lighted up my Soul / Glory and bright Ambition languish now, / And leave me dark and gloomy as the Grave."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: November 25, 1707; 1708

"Oh Seofrid! do'st thou not wonder much, / And pity my weak Temper, when thou seest me / Thus in a Moment chang'd from Hot to Cold, / My active Fancy glowing now with Hopes, / Anon thus drooping; Death in my pale Visage, / My Heart, and my chill Veins, all freezing with Despair."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1712

"When she to foreign Objects Audience gives, / Their Strokes and Motions in the Brain perceives, / As these Perceptions we Ideas name, / From her own Pow'r and active Nature came, / So when discern'd by Intellectual Light, / Her self her various Passions does excite, / To Ill her Hate, to Good he...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"But the sweet Bowl's intoxicating Fume / Will by degrees our vanquish'd Sense benumb, / And o'er the Mind diffuse Egyptian Gloom."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1755, 1771

"In every human breast there lives enshrined / Some atom pregnant with the' etherial mind; / Some plastic power, some intellectual ray, / Some genial sunbeam from the source of day; / Something that, warm and restless to aspire, / Works the young heart, and sets the soul on fire, / And bids us al...

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: December 10, 1788; 1789

"Sometimes indeed it happens, that he may be able to mark the time, when from the sight of a picture, a passage in an author, or a hint in conversation, he has received, as it were, some new and guiding light, something like inspiration, by which his mind has been expanded, and is morally sure th...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)