Date: 1726

"O! teach me what is Good! teach me thy self! / Save me from Folly, Vanity and Vice, / From every low Pursuit! and feed my Soul, / With Knowledge, conscious Peace, and Vertue pure, / Sacred, substantial, never-fading Bliss!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1726

"Society divine! Immortal Minds! / Still visit thus my Nights, for you reserv'd, / And mount my soaring Soul to Deeds like yours."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1726

"Now, th'Eternal Scheme, / That Dark Perplexity, that Mystic Maze, / Which Sight cou'd never trace, nor Heart conceive, / To Reason's Eye, refin'd, clears up apace."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"E'en Light itself, which every thing displays, / Shone undiscover'd, till [Newton's] brighter mind / Untwisted all the shining robe of day."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Inhaling spirit; from the unfetter'd mind, / By thee sublimed, down to the daily race, / The mixing myriads of thy setting beam."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"To me be Nature's volume broad display'd; / And to peruse its all instructing page, / Or, haply catching inspiration thence, / Some easy passage, raptured, to translate, / My sole delight; as through the falling glooms / Pensive I stray, or with the rising dawn / On Fancy's eagle-wing excursive ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Emblem instructive of the virtuous man, / Who keeps his temper'd mind serene and pure, / And every passion aptly harmonized, / Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Deep-roused, I feel / A sacred terror, a severe delight, / Creep through my mortal frame; and thus, me-thinks, / A voice than human more, the abstracted ear / Of fancy strikes."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Once some of us, like thee, through stormy life, / Toil'd, tempest-beaten, ere we could attain / This holy calm, this harmony of mind, / Where purity and peace immingle charms."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"The sad Idea of his murder'd Mate, / Struck from his Side by savage Fowler's Guile, / Across his Fancy comes; and then resounds / A louder Song of Sorrow through the Grove."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)