Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/32

18 Pleas'd with your generous ardour in the chace, And warm as you. Then tell me, for you know, Does beauty ever deign to dwell where health And active use are strangers? Is her charm Confess'd in aught, whose most peculiar ends Are lame and fruitless? Or did nature mean This awful stamp the herald of a lye; To hide the shame of discord and disease, And catch with fair hypocrisy the heart Of idle faith? O no! with better cares, Th' indulgent mother, conscious how infirm Her offspring tread the paths of good and ill, By this illustrious image, in each kind Still most illustrious where the object holds Its native pow'rs most perfect, she by this Illumes the headstrong impulse of desire, And sanctifies his choice. The generous glebe Whose bosom smiles with verdure, the clear tract Of streams delicious to the thirsty soul, The bloom of nectar'd fruitage ripe to sense, And every charm of animated things, Are only pledges of a state sincere, Th' integrity and order of their frame, When all is well within, and every end Accomplish'd. Thus was beauty sent from heav'n, The lovely ministress of truth and good In