Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/84

70 Or flies from evil; and opinion gives Report of good or evil, as the scene Was drawn by fancy, lovely or deform'd: Thus her report can never there be true, Where fancy cheats the intellectual eye, With glaring colours and distorted lines. Is there a man, who at the sound of death, Sees ghastly shapes of terror conjur'd up, And black before him; nought but death-bed groans And fearful pray'rs, and plunging from the brink Of light and being, down the gloomy air, An unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind, If no bright forms of excellence attend The image of his country; nor the pomp Of sacred senates, nor the guardian voice Of justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes The conscious bosom with a patriot's flame; Will not opinion tell him, that to die, Or stand the hazard, is a greater ill Than to betray his country? And in act Will he not chuse to be a wretch and live? Here vice begins then. From th' inchanting cup Which fancy holds to all, th' unwary thirst Of youth oft swallows a Circæan draught, That sheds a baleful tincture o'er the eye Of reason, till no longer he discerns, And only guides to err. Then revel forth A