Date: 1785

"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

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)

Date: 1785

"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1787

"Fat is foul weather--dims the fancy's sight"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1788

"On feeling hearts she [Mercy] sheds celestial dew, / And breathes her spirit o'er th' enlighten'd few; / From soul to soul the spreading influence steals, / Till every breast the soft contagion feels."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"Ah, not alone of power possest / To check each virtue of the breast; / As when the numbing frosts arise / The charm of vegetation dies."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"His sway the harden'd bosom leads / To Cruelty's remorseless deeds; / Like the blue lightning when it springs / With fury on its livid wings, / Darts to its goal with baleful force, / Nor heeds that ruin marks its course."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789?

The placid current of the mind may be bestorm'd so that "th' ideal billows, raging, rise"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"Like a snow-ball, the mind, fraught with peace in its prime, / Moves swiftly adown the steep shelvings of Time; / Accumulates filth from Society's sons, / And strengthens and hardens its coat as it runs; / Till habit on habit is negligent laid, / And the object appears motley, vile, and ill-made...

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1790

"But let me not thus pond'ring, gaping, stand-- / But, lo, I am not at my own command: / Bed, bosom, kiss, embraces, storm my brains, / And, lawless tyrants, bind my will in chains."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)