Date: 1720

"Hypocrisie contracts, there is no Room within, / The Heart is fetter'd and enthral'd by Sin."

— Pennecuik, Alexander (d. 1730)

Date: 1728

"All Nature fades extinct; and She alone / Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every Thought, / Fills every Sense, and pants in every Vein."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"And when with these the serious thought is foil'd, / We, shifting for relief, would play the shapes / Of frolic fancy; and incessant form / Unnumber'd pictures, fleeting o'er the brain / Yet rapid still renew'd, and pour'd immense / Into the mind, unbounded without space."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1743

"This wings its Way to its Almighty Source, / The Witness of its Actions, now its Judge: / That drops into the dark and noisome Grave, / Like a disabled Pitcher of no Use."

— Blair, Robert (1699-1746)

Date: 1743

"Here garrulous Old Age winds up his Tale; / And jovial Youth of lightsome vacant Heart, / Whose ev'ry Day was made of Melody, / Hears not the Voice of Mirth."

— Blair, Robert (1699-1746)

Date: 1746

"Social friends, / Attuned to happy unison of soul; / To whose exalting eye a fairer world, / Of which the vulgar never had a glimpse, / Displays its charms; whose minds are richly fraught / With philosophic stores, superior light; / And in whose breast, enthusiastic, burns / Virtue, the sons of ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Adieu, ye lays, that fancy's flowers adorn, / The soft amusement of the vacant mind!"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)