Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/52

38 That wheel the pensile planets round the year; Whether in wonders of the rowling deep, Or smiling fruits of pleasure-pregnant earth, Or fine-adjusted springs of life and sense, You scan the counsels of their author's hand.


 * What, when to raise the meditated scene,

The flame of passion, thro' the struggling soul Deep-kindled, shows across that sudden blaze The object of its rapture, vast of size, With fiercer colours and a night of shade? What? like a storm from their capacious bed The sounding seas o'erwhelming, when the might Of these eruptions, working from the depth Of man's strong apprehension, shakes his frame Even to the base; from every naked sense Of pain or pleasure dissipating all Opinion's feeble cov'rings, and the veil Spun from the cobweb-fashion of the times To hide the feeling heart? Then nature speaks Her genuine language, and the words of men, Big with the very motion of their souls, Declare with what accumulated force, Th' impetuous nerve of passion urges on The native weight and energy of things.


 * Yet more; her honours where nor beauty claims,

Nor shews of good the thirsty sense allure, From