Date: 1770

"Take HIM ye wretched for your only good; / Take HIM ye starving souls to be your food."

— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'Fancy enervates, while it sooths, the heart, / 'And, while it dazzles, wounds the mental sight: / 'To joy each heightening charm it can impart, / 'But wraps the hour of wo in tenfold night."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1772-1781

"Fond Fancy's eye, / That inly gives locality and form / To what she prizes best, full oft pervades / Those hidden caverns, where pale chrysolites, / And glittering spars dart a mysterious gleam / Of inborn lustre, from the garish day / Unborrow'd."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1773

A panting heart may be chilled by "hideous forms"

— Penny [née Hughes, formerly Christian], Anne (bap. 1729, d. 1780/4)

Date: 1773

"How bright the scene to Fancy's eye appears, / Through the long perspective of distant years, / When this, this little group their country calls / From academic shades and learned halls, / To fix her laws, her spirit to sustain, / And light up glory through her wide domain!"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"O Wisdom! if thy soft controul / Can soothe the sickness of the soul, / Can bid the warring passions cease, / And breathe the calm of tender peace;-- / Wisdom! I bless thy gentle sway, / And ever, ever will obey."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

The soul contains "An embryo of God, a spark of fire divine / Which must burn on for ages."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1764, 1773

"And souls, however mean or vile, / Like features, brighten by a smile."

— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)

Date: 1773

"There, whilst the vault resounds my plaintive sigh, / In deathful echoes, shall Despondence bring / The saddest visions on the mind's wan eye, / That ever wav'd on Fancy's blackest wing"

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