Date: 1782

"Is all over? no ray of reason left? no knowledge of thy wretched Delvile?"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"Why drive him from my presence? he might now / Raise my sunk soul, and my benighted mind / Enlighten with religion's cheering ray."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1782

"Proceed, proceed, thrice venerable sage! / Enlighten my dark mind with this new ray, / This dawning of salvation!"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1782

One may have a mind "Not yet so blank, or fashionably blind, / But now and then perhaps a feeble ray /Of distant wisdom shoots across his way"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1783

" And when thou yields to night thy wide domain, / Let rays of truth enlight his sleeping brain."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1783

"When first the orient rays of beauty move / The conscious soul, they light the lamp of love"

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1784

"I hurry forward, passion's helplesss slave! And scorning reason's mild and sober light, / Pursue the path that leads me to the grave!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"O, Montagu! forgive me, if I sing / red with the milder ray / Of soft humanity, and kindness bland: / So wide its influence, that the bright beams / Reach the low vale where mists of ignorance lodge, / Strike on the innate spark which lay immersed, / Thick-clogged, and almost quenched in total n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)