Date: 1787

"For scenes that frequent shapes of Death impart / Arm the firm breast, and steel the manly heart"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1787

"To curse the hearts that selfish maxims steel, / And execrate the effects of patriot zeal.--"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1787

"But when by various wrongs your bosom's steel'd, / Your groaning country calling to the field, / And 'twixt the foe and you the uncertain scale / Of fight must shew whose fortune shall prevail"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: January 23, 1787, 1788

"Whelm'd with such violence of woe, / Would melt a heart of steel, / Which only those who love can know, / Who lose can only feel."

— Arley [Miles Peter Andrews (1742- 814)?]

Date: 1788

"Strong Genius, from whose forge of thought / Forms rise, to quick perfection wrought"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1780, 1788

"Authority! unfeeling power, / Whose iron heart can coldly doom / The Debtor, dragg'd from Pleasure's bower, / To sicken in the dungeon's gloom."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1788

"So have I heard / The captive finch, in narrow cage confin'd, / Charm all his woe away with cheerful song, / Which might have melted e'en a heart of steel / To give him liberty"

— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)

Date: 1788

"With horns, and tail, and hoofs that make folks start; / And in my breast a millstone for a heart!"

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

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?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"Not so the slave; oppress'd with secret care, / He sinks the hapless victim of despair; / Or, doom'd to torments that might even move / The steely heart, and melt it into love; / Till worn with anguish, with'ring in his bloom, / He falls an early tenant of the tomb!"

— Falconar, Maria (b. 1771-) and Harriet (b. 1774-)