Date: 1730, 1744, 1746
"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
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: 1732
"How curs'd the Man, who still is musing found? / His Mill-Horse Soul forms one eternal Round?"
preview | full record— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)
Date: 1732
"Malice, and Lust, voracious Birds of Prey, / That out-soar Reason, and our Wishes sway; / Desires' wild Seas, on which the wise are tost, / By Pilot Indolence, are safely crost."
preview | full record— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)
Date: 1733
"I see the Soul in pensive fit, / And mopeing like sick Linnet sit, / With dewy eye and moulting wing, / Unperch'd, averse to fly or sing."
preview | full record— Green, Matthew (1696-1737) [pseud. Peter Drake, a Fisherman of Brentford]
Date: 1733-4
"And hence one Master Passion in the breast, / Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1734
"Hail, holy souls, no more confin'd / To limbs and bones that clog the mind; / Ye have escap'd the snares, and left the chains behind."
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1735
"But if my Soul, / To this gross Clay confin'd, flutters on Earth / With less ambitious Wing; unskill'd to range / From Orb to Orb, where Newton leads the Way; / And view with piercing Eye the grand Machine, / Worlds above Worlds; subservient to his Voice, / Who, veil'd in clouded Majesty, alone ...
preview | full record— Somervile, William (1675-1742)
Date: 1735
"No more the tender seeds unquicken'd lie, / But stretch their form and wait for wings to fly."
preview | full record— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)
Date: 1737
"Brave Souls when loos'd from this ignoble Chain / Of Clay, and sent to their own Heav'n again, / From Earth's gross Orb on Virtue's Pinions rise / In Æther wanton, and enjoy the Skies."
preview | full record— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)