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)

Date: 1727

"Here, the soft Flocks, with that same harmless Look, / They wore alive, and ruminating still, / In Fancy's Eye; and there the frowning Bull, / And Ox half-rais'd"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"'Fear not,' he said, 'Sweet innocence! thou stranger to offence, / And inward storm!'"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Passes the day illusive, and perplext, / As fleets the Vision o'er the formful Brain, / This Moment hurrying wild the impassion'd Soul, / The next in Nothing lost."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Effusive Source of Evidence, and Truth! / A Lustre shedding o'er the ennobled Mind, / Stronger than Summer-Noon, and pure as that, / Which gently vibrates on the Eye of Saint, / New to the Dawning of coelestial Day."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Hence, thro' her nourish'd Powers, enlarged by Thee, / She soaring, spurns, with elevated Pride, / The tangling Mass of Cares, and low Desires, / That bind the fluttering Crowd; and, Angel-wing'd, / The Heights of Science and of Vertue gains, / Where all is calm and bright! with Nature round, / ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)