PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND, BY T. BENSLEY, BOLT COURT, FLEET, STREET.
Oh could my Mind, unfolded in my page, Enlighten climes and mould a future age; There as it glow’d, with noblest frenzy fraught, Dispense the treasures of exalted thought; To Virtue wake the pulses of the heart, And bid the tear of emulation start! Oh could it still, thro’ each succeeding year, My life, my manners, and my name endear; And, when the poet sleeps in silent dust, Still hold communion with the wise and just!— Yet should this Verse, my leisure’s best resource, When thro’ the world it steals its secret course, Revive but once a generous wish supprest, Chase but a sigh, or charm a care to rest; In one good deed a fleeting hour employ, Or flush one faded cheek with honest joy; Blest were my lines, tho’ limited their sphere, Tho’ short their date, as his who trac’d them here.
The Pleasures of Memory Epistle to a Friend Ode to Superstition Written to be spoken in a Theatre To—— The Sailor To an old Oak From Euripides To Two Sisters Written at Midnight On a Tear To a Voice that had been lost From a Greek Epigram. To the Torso To—— Written in a Sick Chamber To a Friend on his Marriage The Alps at Day-break Imitation of an Italian Sonnet On——asleep. To the youngest Daughter of Lady ** An Epitaph on a Robin-Redbreast A Wish An Italian Song To the Gnat An Inscription in the Crimea Captivity A Character Written in the Highlands of Scotland A Farewell To the Butterfly Written in Westminster Abbey The Voyage of Columbus
Hoc est Vivere bis, vitâ posse priore frui.
Dolce sentier……. Colle, che mi piacesti,…. Ov’ ancor per usanza Amor mi mena; Ben riconosco in voi l’usate forme, Non, lasso, in me.
The Poem begins with the description of an obscure village, and of the pleasing melancholy which it excites on being revisited after a long absence. This mixed sensation is an effect of the Memory. From an effect we naturally ascend to the cause; and the subject proposed is then unfolded with an investigation of the nature and leading principles of this faculty.
It is evident that our ideas flow in continual succession, and introduce each other with a certain degree of regularity. They are sometimes excited by sensible objects, and sometimes by an internal operation of the mind. Of the former species is most probably the memory of brutes; and its many sources of pleasure to them, as well as to us, are considered in the first part. The latter is the most perfect degree of memory, and forms the subject of the second.