Date: 1693
"Musick alone inflames my drooping Mind; / Nay, she would mount her Wings, and fly away, / Not be confin'd to this dull Lump of Clay, / Did not the Charms of Musick most divine / Unite, and things so wide, so close combine."
preview | full record— Hawkshaw, Benjamin (1671/2-1738)
Date: 1700
"My Thoughts should like their Silver Fishes shine, / With quick, bright glitterings thro' each moving line."
preview | full record— Hopkins, John (b. 1675)
Date: w. 1702-1713, 1989
"So the brave Falcon when its glorys fade / When its strong wings their generous forces shed / The vacant holds ignobler birds supply / With Ravens feathers impd she mounts on high / & weak or giddy strayes along the sky."
preview | full record— Parnell, Thomas (1679-1718)
Date: 1716
"My ravish'd Heart strait like a Bird of Prey / Stoop'd at the Lure; And thus my early Youth / Was by vain Thoughts bewildred and mis-led."
preview | full record— Monck [née Molesworth], Mary (1677?-1715)
Date: March 13, 1727
"Must these like empty shadows pass, / Or forms reflected from a glass? / Or mere chimeras in the mind, / That fly, and leave no marks behind?"
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1731
"Here Arlington, thy mighty Mind disdains / Inferior Earth, and breaks its servile Chains, / Aloft on Contemplations Wings you rise, / Scorn all below and mingle with the Skies."
preview | full record— Boyse, Samuel (1708-1749)
Date: 1755
The "busy Statesman's mind" may grow putrid on the throne of power so that "Fresh vices spring up ev'ry hour; / As in dead corses serpents breed, / And loathsome, on corruption feed"
preview | full record— Derrick, Samuel (1724-1769)
Date: 1762
"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1767
"Man in this world, Sir, may be compared to a hackney-coach upon a stand; continually subject to be drawn by his unruly appetites, on one foolish jaunt or another; but you will say, if his appetites are horses, which as it were drag him along, reason is the coachman to rule those horses--But, Sir...
preview | full record— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)
Date: 1772
Fancy may "mount the rapid Car, / And Judgement hold the Reins"
preview | full record— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)