Date: 1765

"Thy way, by grace so well begun, / I shall have farther strength to run / Until I reach the goal; / When, Jesus, from this low degree, / And bondage of mortality, / Thou hast enlarged my soul."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1765

"Lord, from this despondence rousing, / For the glory of thy name, / And my righteous cause espousing, / Bring my soul from bonds and shame."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1767

"Yet, to the stoic apathy estrang'd, / Thou canst, with steady courage, probe to th' quick / The wound thou mean'st to cure; thou canst reprove / With all the sweet persuasion of esteem: / And give a momentary pang, to free / The worthy mind from its ignoble chain."

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1781

"My head and ears confus'd, I find / One cannot here relax the Mind, / In vain she strives to slip her chains, / Law, Law, through all these regions reigns; / So back to Chambers I return, / More Patience, and more Law, to learn."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: August 1783

"Death broke at once the vital chain, / And free'd his soul the nearest way."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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: 1788

"Since our most wicked act / Is not our sin, and our religious awe / Delusion, if that strong Necessity / Chains up our will."

— Crowe, William (1745-1829)

Date: 1788

"Who for such perishable gaudes would put / A yoke upon his free unbroken spirit, / And gall himself with trammels and the rubs / Of this world's business; so he might stand clear / Of judgment and the tax of idleness / In that dread audit, when his mortal hours / (Which now with soft and silent ...

— Crowe, William (1745-1829)

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)

Date: 1793

"Exulting Reason from her bondage springs, / Claims Heav'n's wide range, and spreads her eagle wings; / While Superstition, lodg'd with bats and owls, / With Horror, and the hopeless maniac, howls."

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