Date: 1728

"HAIL, Mighty Being! Universal Soul / Of Heaven and Earth! Essential Presence, hail! / To Thee I bend the Knee, to Thee my Thoughts / Continual climb, who, with a Master-Hand, / Hast the great Whole into Perfection touch'd."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"From the Tongue / Th' unfinish'd Period falls: while, born away / On swelling Thought, his wafted Spirit flies / To the dear Bosom of his absent Fair; / And leaves the Semblance of a Lover, fix'd / In melancholy Site, with Head declin'd, / And Love-dejected Eyes."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"Reflection pours, / Afresh, her Beauties on his busy Thought, / Her first Endearments, twining round the Soul, / With all the Witchcraft of ensnaring Love."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, / Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home / Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth / In many a vain effort."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, / Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep, / A dire descent! beyond the power of frost, / Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, / Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land unknown, / What water, of the still unfrozen eye, / In the loose marsh or solitary lak...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"And when with these the serious thought is foil'd, / We, shifting for relief, would play the shapes / Of frolic fancy; and incessant form / Unnumber'd pictures, fleeting o'er the brain / Yet rapid still renew'd, and pour'd immense / Into the mind, unbounded without space."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds / Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, / Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; / Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, / In swifter sallies darting to the brain; / Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, / Bright ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"Turn we a moment Fancy's rapid flight / To vigorous soils, and climes of fair extent; / Where, by the potent sun elated high, / The vineyard swells refulgent on the day; / Spreads o'er the vale; or up the mountain climbs, / Profuse; and drinks amid the sunny rocks, / From cliff to cliff increase...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"The generous Ashley thine, the friend of man; / Who scan'd his nature with a brother's eye, / His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim, / To touch the finer movements of the mind, / And with the moral beauty charm the heart."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)