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: 1746

"While there with thee the enchanted round I walk, / The regulated wild, gay Fancy then / Will tread in thought the groves of attic land; / Will from thy standard taste refine her own, / Correct her pencil to the purest truth / Of Nature, or, the unimpassion'd shades / Forsaking, raise it to the ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"For me, when I forget the darling theme, / Whether the blossom blows, the summer-ray / Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams; / Or Winter rises in the blackening east; / Be my tongue mute, may fancy paint no more, / And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"What, what is virtue, but repose of mind, / A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storm?"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"Ten thousand great ideas fill'd his mind; / But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold, / And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears, / Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd, / Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old."

— 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)

Date: 1748

"His soul was fair, / Bright as the children of yon azure sheen!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"O who can speak the vigorous joys of health! / Unclogg'd the body, unobscured the mind."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"But here, instead, is foster'd every ill, / Which or distemper'd minds or bodies know."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)