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.

    50/144 (page 46)
    The unadorn’d condition of her birth ^ 5^0 And drefs’d by fancy in ten thoufand hues, Affumes a various feature, to attract, With charms refponfive to each gazer’s eye. The hearts of men. Amid his rural walk, Th’ ingenuous youth whom foiitude infpires 55^ With pureft wifhes, from the pen five fhade Beholds her moving, like a virgin-mufe That wakes her lyre to fome indulgent theme Of harmony and wonder : while among The herd of fervile minds, her ftrenuous form 560 Indignant flalhes on the patriot’s eye, And thro’ the rolls of memory appeals To ancient honour, or in abl ferene, Yet watchful, raifes the majeftic fword Of publick pow’r, from dark ambition’s reach 565 To guard the facred volume of the law. Genius of ancient Greece ! whofe faithful Heps Well-pleas’d I follow thro’ the facred paths moral fenfe, to be determin'd by the peculiar temper of the imagination and the earlieh affociations of ideas.