seriousness and in well-measured verse. The Hymn to the Naiads has delighted so many cultured readers that the high rank generally assigned to it among Akenside's poems must be maintained; but it has the faults of its author's longer work. Nothing that he has written is in style so pure and strong as the Inscriptions. Their narrow limits did not give time for the rise of rhetorical excitement. They have, as is fitting, a marmoreal purity and permanence.
The recast of The Pleasures of Imagination does not gain on the original poem. Fine audacities of expression are struck away; the philosophical analysis becomes more minute and laboured. And if we are spared the incredible allegory of Euphrosyne and Nemesis, and the dreary sprightliness of the theory of ridicule, there are added passages which make amends to the injured Goddess of Dulness.
FROM THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.'
Say, why was man so eminently raised
Amid the vast creation? why ordained
Through life and death to dart his piercing eye,
With thoughts beyond the limits of his frame,
But that the Omnipotent might send him forth,
In sight of mortal and immortal powers
As on a boundless theatre, to run
The great career of justice; to exalt
His generous aim to all diviner deeds;
To chase each partial purpose from his breast;
And through the mists of passion and of sense,
And through the tossing tide of chance and pain,
To hold his course unfaltering, while the voice
Of Truth and Virtue, up the steep ascent
Of Nature, calls him to his high reward,—
The applauding smile of Heaven? Else wherefore burns
In mortal bosoms this unquenched hope
That breathes from day to day sublimer things,
And mocks possession? wherefore darts the mind
With such resistless ardour to embrace
Majestic forms, impatient to be free;
Spurning the gross control of wilful might;
Proud of the strong contention of her toils;
Proud to be daring? Who but rather turns
To heaven's broad fire his unconstrained view
Than to the glimmering of a waxen flame?
Who that from Alpine heights his labouring eye
Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey
Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave
Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade, And continents of sand, will turn his gaze
To mark the windings of a scanty rill
That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul
Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth,
And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
Rides on the vollied lightning through the heavens ;
Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast,
Sweeps the long track of day. Then high she soars
The blue profound, and hovering round the sun,
Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
Of light, beholds his unrelenting sway
Bend the reluctant planets to absolve
The fated rounds of time. Thence, far effused
She darts her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets, through its burning signs,
Exulting, measures the perennial wheel
Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars,
Whose blended light as with a milky zone
Invests the orient. Now amazed she views
The empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold,
Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode ;
And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
Has travelled the profound six thousand years,
Nor yet arrives in sight of mortal things.
Even on the barriers of the world untired
She meditates the eternal depth below;
Till, half recoiling, down the headlong steep
She plunges; soon o'erwhelmed and swallowed up
In that immense of being. There her hopes
Rest at the fated goal. For, from the birth
Of mortal man, the sovran Maker said,
That not in humble nor in brief delight,
Not in the fading echoes of renown,
Power's purple robes, nor Pleasure's flowery lap,
The soul should find enjoyment; but, from these
Turning disdainful to an equal good,
Through all the ascent of things enlarge her view,
Till every bound at length should disappear,
And infinite perfection close the scene.
ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE, 1740.
The radiant ruler of the year
At length his wintry goal attains;
Soon to reverse the long career,
And northward bend his steady reins.
Now, piercing half Potosi's height,
Prone rush the fiery floods of light,
Ripening the mountain's silver stores,
While in some cavern's horrid shade,
The panting Indian hides his head,
And oft the approach of eve implores.
But lo, on this deserted coast
How pale the sun! how thick the air!
Mustering his storms, a sordid host,
Lo, Winter desolates the year.
The fields resign their latest bloom;
No more the breezes waft perfume,
No more the streams in music roll:
But snows fall dark or rains resound;
And, while great Nature mourns around,
Her griefs infect the human soul.
Hence the loud city's busy throngs
Urge the warm bowl and splendid fire;
Harmonious dances, festive songs,
Against the spiteful heaven conspire.
Meantime, perhaps with tender fears,
Some village-dame the curfew hears,
While round the hearth her children play:
At morn their father went abroad;
The moon is sunk, and deep the road;
She sighs, and wonders at his stay.
But thou, my lyre, awake, arise,
And hail the sun's returning force;
Even now he climbs the northern skies,
And health and hope attend his course.
Then louder howl the aërial waste,
Be earth with keener cold embraced,
Yet gentle hours advance their wing;
And Fancy, mocking Winter's might,
With flowers, and dews, and streaming light,
Already decks the new-born spring.
O fountain of the golden day!
Could mortal vows promote thy speed,
How soon before thy vernal ray
Should each unkindly damp recede!
How soon each hovering tempest fly,
Whose stores for mischief arm the sky,
Prompt on our heads to burst amain;
To rend the forest from the steep,
Or, thundering o'er the Baltic deep,
To whelm the merchant's hopes of gain!
But let not man's unequal views
Presume o'er Nature and her laws;
'Tis his with grateful joy to use
The indulgence of the sovran Cause;
Secure that health and beauty springs
Through this majestic frame of things,
Beyond what he can reach to know,
And that Heaven's all-subduing will,
With good, the progeny of ill,
Attempereth every state below.
How pleasing wears the wintry night,
Spent with the old illustrious dead!
While by the taper's trembling light
I seem those awful scenes to tread
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