Date: 1745
"Too much my heart of Beauty's power hath known, / Too long to Love hath reason left her throne; / Too long my genius mourn'd his myrtle chain, / And three rich years of youth consum'd in vain."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1746
"With inward view, / Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns / Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance, / The obedient phantoms vanish or appear; / Compound, divide, and into order shift, / Each to his rank, from plain perception up / To the fair forms of Fancy's fleeting train."
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
Date: 1748
"Let godlike reason, from her sovereign throne, / Speak the commanding word 'I will!' and it is done."
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
Date: 1772
"With that strong master of our frame, / The inexorable judge within / What can be done?"
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1814
"No single passion, and no ruling thought / That leaves the rest, as once, unseen, unsought, / But the wild prospect when the Soul reviews, / All rushing through their thousand avenues"
preview | full record— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Date: 1816
"He would not yield dominion of his mind / To Spirits against whom his own rebelled."
preview | full record— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Date: 1816
"[T]o conceal, / With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught,-- / Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,-- / Which is the tyrant Spirit of our thought, / Is a stern task of soul."
preview | full record— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)