The Poetical Works of James Thomson: With His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements : with the Life of the Author and an Essay on the Plan and Characters of the Poem on the Seasons, Volume 1

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Benjamin Johnson, 1804
 

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Page 32 - Delightful task ! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot, To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
Page 162 - The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage. His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills; And let me catch it as I muse along. Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound...
Page 159 - Ye noble few ! who here unbending stand Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up awhile, And what your bounded view, which only saw A little part, deem'd Evil, is no more ; The storms of Wintry Time will quickly pass, And one unbounded Spring encircle all.
Page 163 - There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay, The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of Seasons as they roll.
Page xxiii - wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shews him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses.
Page 161 - Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Page 164 - When, e'en at last, the solemn hour shall come, And wing my mystic flight to future worlds, I cheerful will obey : there, with new powers, Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go Where universal love not smiles around...
Page 137 - In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas ! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home.
Page 1 - And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze, Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets Deform the day delightless...
Page 161 - With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year : And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks : And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales. Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfin'd, And spreads a common feast for all that lives...

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