Date: 1728

"Then infant Reason grows apace, and calls / For the kind Hand of an assiduous Care: / Delightful Task! to rear the tender Thought, / To teach the young Idea how to shoot, / To pour the fresh Instruction o'er the Mind, / To breathe th' inspiring Spirit, and to plant / The generous Purpose in...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"Deep to the root / Of vegetation parch'd, the cleaving fields / And slippery lawn an arid hue disclose, / Blast Fancy's bloom, and wither e'en the soul."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

Yet the kind source of every gentle art, / And all the soft civility of life: / Raiser of human kind! by Nature cast, / Naked, and helpless, out amid the woods / And wilds, to rude inclement elements; / With various seeds of art deep in the mind / Implanted, and profusely pour'd around / Material...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep / Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)