The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books.

  • Mark Akenside
Date:
1754
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/144 (page 45)
    Of genius and defign ; th’ ambitious mind There fees herfelf : by thefe congenial forms Touch’d and awaken’d, with intenfer ad 535 She bends her nerve, and meditates well-pleas’d Her features in the mirror. For of all Th’ inhabitants of earth, to man alone Creative wifdom gave to lift his eye To truth’s eternal meafures ; thence to frame 540 The facred laws of adion and of will, Difcerning juftice from unequal deeds, And temperance from folly. But beyond This energy of truth, whofe didates bind Aflenting reafon, the benignant fire, 545 To deck the honour’d paths of juft and good, Has added bright imagination’s rays : Where virtue-riling from the awful depth Of truth’s myfterious bofom, doth forfake The Where virtue rijing from the awful depth Of truth*s myferious bofom, &c. ] According to the opinion of thofe who afiert moral obligation to be founded on an immu¬ table and univerfal law, and that which is dually call d tne moral