wings of the wind, rides not on the forked lightning, but that it is
the soul which is lifted up there; that it is the soul which, in its
high aspirings,'

"Yokes with whirlwinds and the northern blast,
and scatters grandeur around it on its way."

All this seems anticipated, and, as it were, coiled up in the words
of our poet:--

"Mind, mind alone (bear witness earth and heaven!)
The living fountains in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime."

That Akenside was a real poet many expressions in his "Pleasures of
Imagination" prove, such as that just quoted--

"Yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast
Sweeps the long tract of day;"

but, taking his poem as a whole, it is rather a tissue of eloquence
and philosophical declamation than of imagination. He deals rather
in sheet lightning than in forked flashes. As a didactic poem it has
a high, but not the highest place. It must not be named beside the
"De Rerum Natura" of Lucretius, or the "Georgics" of Virgil, or the
"Night Thoughts" of Young; and in poetry, yields even to the
"Queen Mab" of Shelley. It ranks high, however, amongst that fine
class of works which have called themselves, by no misnomer,
"Pleasures;" and to recount all the names of which were to give an
"enumeration of sweets" as delightful as that in "Don Juan." How