Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792
"Yet are there some who think (but what a shame!) / Poor people's souls like pence of Birmingham, / Adulterated brass--base stuff--abhorr'd-- / That never can pass current with the Lord; / And think because of wealth they boast a store, / With ev'ry freedom they may treat the poor."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1785
"Threads of politic and shrewd design" that charge the mind with meanings may be (or not, as it were) disentangled from "the puzzled skein"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
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!"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1785
"'Twixt shame and passion floats the struggling mind, / To Virtue now, and now to vice inclin'd, / This frowns refusal, that persuades to yield, / Till Reason falls, and Passion takes the field."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1786
"Young Fancy, oft in rainbow vest array'd, / Points to new scenes that in succession pass / Across the wond'rous mirror that she bears, / And bids thy unsated soul and wandering eye / A wider range o'er all her prospects take."
preview | full record— Headley, Henry (1765-1788)
Date: 1786
"A festive glass the drooping mind requires, / His far-off phiz keen Fancy's eye descries"
preview | full record— Headley, Henry (1765-1788)
Date: 1786, 1816
"In vain at glory gudgeon Boswell snaps-- / His mind's a paper kite--compos'd of scraps / Just o'er the tops of chimneys form'd to fly."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1786
"So o'er my soul short rays of reason fly, / Then fade:--and leave me, to despair and die!"
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1786
"Oh thou! to save whose peace I now depart, / Will thy soft mind, thy poor lost friend deplore, / When worms shall feed on this devoted heart, / Where even thy image shall be found no more / Yet may thy pity mingle not with pain, / For then thy hapless lover--dies in vain!"
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1786
"'Tis thy pure spirit warms my Anna's mind. / Beams thro' the pensive softness of her form, / And holds its altar--on her spotless heart!"
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)