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."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1731

Say "How Fancy ev'ry Shape puts on, / How kindling Sparks her Form compose, / And whence that ever shining Train / That Memory or Experience shows."

— Travers, H. (f. 1730)

Date: 1732

"Thus from your eyes united beams conspire, / To kindle in our souls a pleasing fire;"

— Dodsley, Robert (1703-1764)

Date: 1733

"[S]prightly Wit, that all admire," may be "an unlicens'd lawless Fire"

— Chandler, Mary (1687-1745)

Date: 1735, 1745

"And Fancy's Fire with Judgment's Temper cools."

— Trapp, Joseph (1679-1747)

Date: 1735, 1763

"Does mean self-love contract each social aim? / Here publick transports shall thy soul inflame."

— Melmoth, William, the younger (bap. 1710, d. 1799)

Date: 1735-6

"He, too, the fire of fancy feeds intense, / With all the train of passions thence derived: / Not kindling quick, a noisy transient blaze, / But gradual, silent, lasting, and profound."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1736

"THOU, matur'd by glad Hesperian Suns, / Tobacco, Fountain pure of limpid Truth, / That looks the very Soul; whence pouring Thought / Swarms all the Mind; absorpt is yellow Care, / And at each Puff Imagination burns."

— Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1705-1760)

Date: 1737

"Whence Talbot's friendship glows to future times, / Intrepid, warm; of kindred tempers born; / Nursed, by experience, into slow esteem, / Calm confidence unbounded, love not blind, / And the sweet light from mingled minds disclosed, / From mingled chymic oils as bursts the fire."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1739

"Those gifts for nobler purposes assign'd, / To raise the thoughts, and moralize the mind; / The chaste delights of virtues to inspire, / And warm the bosom with seraphic fire; / Sublime the passions, lend devotion wings, / And celebrate the first great cause of things."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)