Date: 1747

"Her Mind does all their glorious Beams dispense, / Bright as they are they owe their Rays to Sense."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1749

"His clouded Soul now darts no dazling Ray, / And faintly warms the animated Clay: / Not Rome's sad Ruins such Impressions leave, / As Reason bury'd in the Body's Grave:"

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1757

"The lamp of sense, that glows in ev'ry breast, / Nature illumes, that man may stand confest"

— Boyce, Samuel (d. 1775)

Date: w. 1739, 1762

Melancholy's "transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"Where, to the Beam of intellectual Day, / The genuine Charms of moral Beauty play: / With pleasing Force the strong Attractions move / Each finer Sense, and tune it into Love."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"Pure from th' eternal Source of Being came / That Ray divine that lights the human Frame: / Yet oft, forgetful of it's heavenly Birth, / It sinks obscur'd beneath the Weight of the Earth: / Mechanic Pow'rs retard it's Flight, and hence / The Storms of Passion, and the Clouds of Sense: / 'Tis Lif...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"'Till then [death], the Muse essays the tuneful Art, / To fix her moral Lesson on thy Heart, / Illume thy Soul with Virtue's brightest Flame, / And point it to that Heav'n from whence it came."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"O, Montagu! forgive me, if I sing / red with the milder ray / Of soft humanity, and kindness bland: / So wide its influence, that the bright beams / Reach the low vale where mists of ignorance lodge, / Strike on the innate spark which lay immersed, / Thick-clogged, and almost quenched in total n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)