Pleasures Of Imagination, The

BOOK I

    With what attractive charms this goodly frame
    Of Nature touches the consenting hearts
    Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
    Which beauteous imitation thence derives
    To deck the poet's, or the painter's toil;
    My verse unfolds. Attend, ye gentle pow'rs
    Of musical delight! and while I sing
    Your gifts, your honours, dance around my strain.
    Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful breast,
   Indulgent Fancy! from the fruitful banks
   Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull
   Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
   Where Shakspeare lies, be present: and with thee
   Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings
   Wafting ten thousand colours through the air,
   Which, by the glances of her magic eye,
   She blends and shifts at will, through countless forms,
   Her wild creation. Goddess of the lyre,
   Which rules the accents of the moving sphere,
   Wilt thou, eternal Harmony! descend
   And join this festive train? for with thee comes
   The guide, the guardian of their lovely sports,
   Majestic Truth; and where Truth deigns to come,
   Her sister Liberty will not be far.
   Be present all ye genii, who conduct
   The wandering footsteps of the youthful bard,
   New to your springs and shades: who touch his ear
   With finer sounds: who heighten to his eye
   The bloom of Nature, and before him turn
   The gayest, happiest attitude of things.

...
         Or shall I mention, where celestial Truth
   Her awful light discloses, to bestow
   A more majestic pomp on Beauty's frame?
   For man loves knowledge, and the beams of Truth
   More welcome touch his understanding's eye,
   Than all the blandishments of sound his ear,
   Than all of taste his tongue. Nor ever yet
   The melting rainbow's vernal-tinctur'd hues
   To me have shone so pleasing, as when first
   The hand of Science pointed out the path
   In which the sun-beams gleaming from the west
   Fall on the watery cloud, whose darksome veil
   Involves the orient; and that trickling shower
   Piercing through every crystalline convex
   Of clustering dew-drops to their flight oppos'd,
   Recoil at length where concave all behind
   The internal surface on each glassy orb
   Repeals their forward passage into air;
   That thence direct they seek the radiant goal
   From which their course began; and, as they strike
   In different lines the gazer's obvious eye,
   Assume a different lustre, through the brede
   Of colours changing from the splendid rose
   To the pale violet's dejected hue.