C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Akenside

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.

Hark! how the gentle echo from her cell

Talks through the cliffs, and murmuring o’er the stream,

Repeats the accent—we shall part no more.

Others of graver mien, behold, adorn’d

With holy ensigns, how sublime they move,

And bending oft their sanctimonious eyes,

Take homage of the simple-minded throng;

Ambassadors of heaven!

Seeks painted trifles and fantastic toys,

And eagerly pursues imaginary joys.

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 his way,

When nature calls him to the destin’d goal.

A double task to paint the finest features of the mind, and to most subtle and mysterious things give color, strength, and motion.

Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.

From bounty issues power.

The graceful tear that streams for others’ woes.

The music of the heart.

Thus was beauty sent from heaven, the lovely ministress of truth and good in this dark world.

We taste the fragrance of the rose.

What, then, is taste, but those internal powers, active and strong, and feelingly alive to each fine impulse? a discerning sense of decent and sublime, with quick disgust from things deformed, or disarranged, or gross in species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold, nor purple state, nor culture, can bestow, but God alone when first his sacred hand imprints the secret bias of the soul.

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