Date: w. 1702-1713, 1989
"So the brave Falcon when its glorys fade / When its strong wings their generous forces shed / The vacant holds ignobler birds supply / With Ravens feathers impd she mounts on high / & weak or giddy strayes along the sky."
preview | full record— Parnell, Thomas (1679-1718)
Date: 1716
"My ravish'd Heart strait like a Bird of Prey / Stoop'd at the Lure; And thus my early Youth / Was by vain Thoughts bewildred and mis-led."
preview | full record— Monck [née Molesworth], Mary (1677?-1715)
Date: March 13, 1727
"Must these like empty shadows pass, / Or forms reflected from a glass? / Or mere chimeras in the mind, / That fly, and leave no marks behind?"
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1731
"Here Arlington, thy mighty Mind disdains / Inferior Earth, and breaks its servile Chains, / Aloft on Contemplations Wings you rise, / Scorn all below and mingle with the Skies."
preview | full record— Boyse, Samuel (1708-1749)
Date: 1732
"But the free-thinker, with a vigorous flight of thought, breaks through those airy springes, and asserts his original independency."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: 1732
"He that wants the proper materials of thought, may think and meditate for ever to no purpose: those cobwebs spun by scholars out of their own brains being alike unserviceable, either for use or ornament."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: 1739
"At such a Time, it was, it was too much! / To pluck the soaring Pinion of my Soul, / While Eagle-ey'd she held her Flight to Heav'n, / O'er Pain and Death triumphant!"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: 1752
"Remorse the Raven of a guilty Mind, / Is ever croaking horrid in my Ear; / Often I rouse to banish it away, / But the Tormentor still returns again, / And like PROMETHES' Vulture, ever gnaws."
preview | full record— Gentleman, Francis (1728-1784)
Date: 1753
"The Moral of this Fable is, that Humanity is the Characteristick of Man; and that a cruel Soul in a human Body, is only a Wolf in Disguise."
preview | full record— Boyse, Samuel (1708-1749)
Date: 1755
The "busy Statesman's mind" may grow putrid on the throne of power so that "Fresh vices spring up ev'ry hour; / As in dead corses serpents breed, / And loathsome, on corruption feed"
preview | full record— Derrick, Samuel (1724-1769)