Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"By these mysterious ties the busy power / Of memory her ideal train preserves / Intire; or when they would elude her watch, / Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste / Of dark oblivion."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Sure the rising sun / O'er the cærulean convex of the sea, / With equal brightness and with equal warmth / Might rowl his fiery orb; nor yet the soul / Thus feel her frame expanded, and her powers / Exulting in the splendor she beholds; / Like a young conqueror moving through the pomp / Of...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Nor thence partakes / Fresh pleasure only: for the attentive mind, / By this harmonious action on her powers / Becomes herself harmonious: wont so oft / In outward things to meditate the charm / Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home / To find a kindred order, to exert / Within herself this ele...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"But if to ampler prospects, if to gaze / On nature's form, where, negligent of all / These lesser graces, she assumes the port / Of that eternal majesty that weigh'd / The world's foundations, if to these the mind / Exalts her daring eye; then mightier far / Will be the change, and nobler."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Whence is this effect, / This kindred power of such discordant things? /Or flows their semblance from that mystic tone / To which the new-born mind's harmonious powers / At first were strung? Or rather from the links / Which artful custom twines around her frame?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"'Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold, / Two faithful needles, from the informing touch / Of the same parent-stone, together drew / Its mystic virtue, and at first conspir'd / With fatal impulse quivering to the pole."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"[T]hus pale revenge / Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands / Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts, / Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws / That keeps them from their prey: thus all the plagues / The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene / The tragic muse discloses, under shapes...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Yet not by all / Those lying forms which fancy in the brain / Engenders, are the kindling passions driven, / To guilty deeds; nor reason bound in chains, / That vice alone may lord it: oft adorn'd / With solemn pageants, folly mounts the throne, / And plays her idiot-anticks, like a queen. / A t...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"What pity then / Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth / Her [the soul's] tender blossom; choak the streams of life, / And blast her spring!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"From heaven my strains begin; from heaven descends / The flame of genius to the human breast, / And love and beauty, and poetic joy / And inspiration."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)