Date: 1730

"Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds / Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, / Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; / Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, / In swifter sallies darting to the brain; / Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, / Bright ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes!/ Inflames imagination; through the breast / Infuses every tenderness; and far / Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"Turn we a moment Fancy's rapid flight / To vigorous soils, and climes of fair extent; / Where, by the potent sun elated high, / The vineyard swells refulgent on the day; / Spreads o'er the vale; or up the mountain climbs, / Profuse; and drinks amid the sunny rocks, / From cliff to cliff increase...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"He, when young Spring protrudes the bursting germs, / Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale / Into his freshen'd soul; her genial hours / He full enjoys; and not a beauty blows, / And not an opening blossom breathes in vain."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"And thou, my youthful Muse's early friend, / In whom the human graces all unite: / Pure light of mind, and tenderness of heart; / Genius, and wisdom; the gay social sense, / By decency chastised; goodness and wit, / In seldom-meeting harmony combined; / Unblemish'd honour, and an active zeal / F...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"The generous Ashley thine, the friend of man; / Who scan'd his nature with a brother's eye, / His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim, / To touch the finer movements of the mind, / And with the moral beauty charm the heart."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"And why thy Locke, / Who made the whole internal world his own?"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"What dreadful havoc in the human breast / The passions make, when unconfin'd, and mad, / They burst, unguided by the mental eye, / The light of reason; which in various ways / Points them to good, or turns them back from ill."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"O save me from the tumult of the soul! / From the wild beasts within!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)