Date: 1718

"Should you presumptuous, quit your safer Ground, / And seek the utmost Lines, which Vertue bound, / And on the Frontier to engage the Foe, With Reason 's weak collected Forces go, / You'll soon those nice, ill-guarded Limits pass, / Throw down your Arms, and fond her Feet embrace, / In her soft ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1734 [1735?]

"Slave to thy self, whilst Lord of all beside, / Surmount thy Weakness, or renounce thy Pride."

— Paget, Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget (1689-1742)

Date: 1741

"Poor Mind, who heard all with extreme moderation, / Thought it now time to speak, and make her allegation: / ''Tis I that, methinks, have most cause to complain, / Who am cramped and confined like a slave in a chain.'"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"He knew, that vain was ev'ry Art, design'd / To check the Freedom of the humane Will; / That Restraints could shackle up the Mind, / Which, self-determin'd, kept her Empire still."

— Ogle, George (1704-1746)

Date: 1741

"'I've a friend,' answers Mind, 'who, though slow, is yet sure, / And will rid me at last of your insolent power: / Will knock down your walls, the whole fabric demolish, / And at once your strong holds and my slavery abolish: / And while in your dust your dull ruins decay, / I'll snap off my cha...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1744

"What slave, unbless'd, who from to-morrow's dawn / Expects an empire? He forgets his chain, / And, throned in thought, his absent sceptre waves."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Yet not by all / Those lying forms which fancy in the brain / Engenders, are the kindling passions driven, / To guilty deeds; nor reason bound in chains, / That vice alone may lord it: oft adorn'd / With solemn pageants, folly mounts the throne, / And plays her idiot-anticks, like a queen. / A t...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1751

"And fettering on her Throne th' immortal Mind, / The Guidance of her Realm to Passions wild resign'd."

— West, Gilbert (1703-1756)

Date: 1752, 1791

"Know too, the joys of sense controul, / And clog the motions of the soul; / Forbid her pinions to aspire, / Damp and impair her native fire: / And sure as Sense (that tyrant!) reigns, / She holds the empress, Soul, in chains."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1762, 1868

"Hasten, Lord, the day of rest / From this indwelling sin, / Vindicate Thy church oppress'd, / And still enslaved within; / Burst our bonds, and let us go / From every thought of evil freed, / Pure in heart, and saints below, / And like our sinless Head."

— Wesley, John and Charles