MARK AKENSIDE QUOTES
English poet and physician (1721-1770)
This was Shakespeare's form; who walked in every path of human life, felt every passion; and to all mankind doth now, will ever, that experience yield which his own genius only could acquire.
MARK AKENSIDE
inscription
The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Thou silent power, whose welcome sway charms every anxious thought away; in whose divine oblivion drown'd, sore pain and weary toil grow mild, love is with kinder looks beguiled, and Grief forgets her fondly cherish'd wound; oh, whither hast thou flown, indulgent god? God of kind shadows and of healing dews, whom dost thou touch with thy Lethaean rod? Around whose temples now thy opiate airs diffuse?
MARK AKENSIDE
"To Sleep"
We taste the fragrance of the rose.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Thus was beauty sent from heaven--the lovely mistress of truth and good in this dark world.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Hence when lightning fires the arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground, when furious whirlwinds rend the howling air, and ocean, groaning from his lowest bed, heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky; amid the mighty uproar, while below the nations tremble, Shakespeare looks abroad from some high cliff, superior, and enjoys the elemental war.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Such and so various are the tastes of men.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
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.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
The man forget not, though in rags he lies, and know the mortal through a crown's disguise.
MARK AKENSIDE
"An Epistle to Curio"
Thus the men whom nature's works can charm, with God himself hold converse; grow familiar, day by day, with his conceptions; act upon his plan; and form to his, the relish of their souls.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
But though Heaven in every breast hath sown these early seeds of love and admiration, yet in vain, without fair culture's kind parental aid, without enlivening suns and genial showers, and shelter from the blast, in vain we hope the tender plant should rear its blooming head, or yield the harvest promis'd in its spring.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Science! thou fair effusive ray from the great source of mental Day, free, generous, and refin'd! Descend with all thy treasures fraught, illumine each bewilder'd thought, and bless my labouring mind.
MARK AKENSIDE
"Hymn to Science"