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

"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: 1728

"BUT now what-e'er these gaudy Fables meant, / And the white Minutes that they shadow'd out, / Are found no more amid these Iron Times, / These Dregs of Life! in which the Human Mind / Has lost that Harmony ineffable, / Which forms the Soul of Happiness; and all / Is off the Poise within; the Pas...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"Thus the glad Skies, / The wide-rejoycing Earth, the Woods, the Streams, / With every Life they hold, down to the Flower / That paints the lowly Vale, or Insect-Wing / Wav'd o'er the Shepherd's Slumber, touch the Mind / To Nature tun'd, with a light-flying Hand, / Invisible, quick-urging, thro' ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"'Tis not the courser Tie of human Laws, / Unnatural oft, and foreign to the Mind, / Which binds their Peace, but Harmony itself, / Attuning all their Passions into Love."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

"E'en not all these, in one rich lot combined, / Can make the happy man, without the mind; / Where judgment sits clear-sighted, and surveys / The chain of reason with unerring gaze; / Where fancy lives, and to the brightening eyes, / His fairer scenes, and bolder figures rise; / Where social lov...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Nor absent are those tuneful shades, I ween, / Taught by the Graces, whose inchanting touch / Shakes every passion from the various string; / Not those, who solemnize the moral scene."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"Whatever fancy paints, invention pours, / Judgment digests, the well tuned bosom feels, / Truth natural, moral, or divine, has taught, / The virtues dictate, or the Muses sing."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)