Date: 1765

"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"

— Merrick, James (1720-1769)

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: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1789

"Ah! hide for ever from my sight / The faithless flatterer Hope--whose pencil, gay, / Portrays some vision of delight, / Then bids the fairy tablet fade away; / While in dire contrast, to mine eyes / Thy phantoms, yet more hideous, rise, / And Memory draws, from Pleasure's wither'd flower, / Corr...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)