Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/84

Or flies from evil; and opinion gives25
Report of good or evil, as the scene
Was drawn by fancy, lovely or deform'd:
Thus her report can never there be true,
Where fancy cheats the intellectual eye,
With glaring colours and distorted lines.30
Is there a man, who at the sound of death,
Sees ghastly shapes of terror conjur'd up,
And black before him; nought but death-bed groans
And fearful pray'rs, and plunging from the brink
Of light and being, down the gloomy air,35
An unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind,
If no bright forms of excellence attend
The image of his country; nor the pomp
Of sacred senates, nor the guardian voice
Of justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes40
The conscious bosom with a patriot's flame;
Will not opinion tell him, that to die,
Or stand the hazard, is a greater ill
Than to betray his country? And in act
Will he not chuse to be a wretch and live?45
Here vice begins then. From th' inchanting cup
Which fancy holds to all, th' unwary thirst
Of youth oft swallows a Circæan draught,
That sheds a baleful tincture o'er the eye
Of reason, till no longer he discerns,50
And only guides to err. Then revel forth

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