Date: 1747

"SINCE freed from Love's enchanting Pains, / Your Heart no longer wears my Chains"

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: w. 1736, 1749

"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1751

"And fettering on her Throne th' immortal Mind, / The Guidance of her Realm to Passions wild resign'd."

— West, Gilbert (1703-1756)

Date: 1752, 1791

"Know too, the joys of sense controul, / And clog the motions of the soul; / Forbid her pinions to aspire, / Damp and impair her native fire: / And sure as Sense (that tyrant!) reigns, / She holds the empress, Soul, in chains."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752, 1791

"Inglorious bondage to the mind, / Heaven-born, sublime, and unconfin'd!"

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1753

"Sorrow renounces latitude of range: / Dwells in confinement's cave; where thought sits chain'd / Muses are shunn'd: and horror's winking lamp."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1753

"Where shall a thoughtless youth this treasure find? / This art of judgment, that becalms the mind? / Chains anger short; and sets reflection free, / Gives tumult temper---and makes fortune see?"

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1753

"By steel may bodies be confin'd, / But love, my Orra, chains the mind."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1755

"He sends his Harbinger before, the Youth / Adorn'd with Beauty, Chastity and Truth: / To base unworthy Slavery betray'd, / With Fetters gall'd, in Chains of Iron laid, / Which pierc'd his Soul; till the celestial Word, / In destin'd Hour, his Innocence explor'd."

— Tollet, Elizabeth (1694-1754)

Date: 1755

"Then shall my cruel Foe, abash'd, recede, / Finding his artful Snares are vainly spread. / Of rolling Years, eleven are past in Pain, / Since I was doom'd to wear the galling Chain: / The Chain which am'rous Minds are forc'd to bear, / Still to the most Submissive, most severe."

— Masters, Mary (1694-1771)