Date: 1760
"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1788
"When the sharp iron wounds his inmost soul, / And his strain'd eyes in burning anguish roll; / Will the parch'd negro find, ere he expire, / No pain in hunger, and no heat in fire?"
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1789, 1794
"In every cry of every Man / In every Infants cry of fear / In every voice; in every ban / The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1803
"The polish'd links that form the social chain, / For ages still to ages may remain / Nor snapt by rage, nor undermin'd by art, / If well the rivets join in every part; / But if those links that would the peasant bind, / Gall his chaf'd body, and corrode his mind, / The poor man's iron, and the r...
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)