Anna Laetitia Barbauld

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.

So when destruction lurks unseen, Which men like mice may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare.

It is to hope, tho' hope were lost.

With Thee in shady solitudes I walk,
With Thee in busy, crowded cities talk,
In every creature own Thy forming power,
In each event Thy providence adore.

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?

Oh! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs; And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.

O gently guide my pilgrim feet
To find thy hermit cell;
Where in some pure and equal sky
Beneath thy soft indulgent eye
The modest virtues dwell.

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

It is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o’er;
So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

Life! we've been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear,;br>Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good morning.

If an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect.

I read his awful name, emblazon'd high
With golden letters on th' illumin'd sky.

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,
And souls are ripen'd in our northern sky.

Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew,
In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew.[…]
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.