PREFACE. SEPARATE editions of the three poems com prising this volume, in a style proportioned to the high estimation in which they are held, have long been required in this country; and their coincidence of design, in several important respects, renders the expediency of their united publication very obvious. Discrepancies are, indeed, observable in the manner in which the three bards have executed their several tasks; yet the delineation of Humanity has been their common aim; and the combined results of their labours afford us a rich and beautiful portraiture of her distinguishing attributes-Hope, Imagination, and Memory. The pictures are not, indeed, complete or perfect. Akenside has been justly censured for not more distinctly alluding to one of the sublimest themes towards which ideality tends the immortality of the soul; and no reader of just taste can fail to lament his untimely death, whereby his greatest production was bereft of the finishing touches he designed to bestow upon it. Campbell's extreme devotion to mere diction, and the absence of true originality in the poetry of Rogers, have very properly furnished occasions for critical objection. Yet so interesting and delightful are the promient features of these poems, that we wonder not that they are enshrined amid the household lore of English literature. Genuine poetical talent characterizes them, if not equally, yet in no ordinary degree. The Book of Pleasures, therefore, is eminently calculated to subserve the great end of Poetry. A spirit of humanity, a grateful recognition of religious truth, and at holy love of nature, pervade its pages. The images it presents are fitted to refine as well as delight; the ideas it affords are suggestive as well as pleasing; for the subjects to which it is devoted, and the gratifications to which it ministers, are not extrinsic but spiritual—pertaining to, and addressing those inward and quenchless fountains of pleasure-Hope, Imagination, and Memory. PHILADELPHIA, September, 1835. ANALYSIS OF PART I. THE poem opens with a comparison between the beauty of remote objects in a landscape, and those ideal scenes of felicity which the imagination delights to contemplate-the influence of anticipation upon the other passions is next delineated-an allusion is made to the well-known fiction in pagan tradition that, when all the guardian deities of mankind abandoned the world, Hope alone was left behind-the consolations of this passion in situations of danger and distress-the seaman on his midnight watch-the soldier marching into battle-allusion to the interesting adventures of Byron. The inspiration of Hope, as it actuates the efforts of genius, whether in the department of science or of taste-domestic felicity, how intimately connected with views of future happiness-picture of a mother watching her infant when asleeppictures of the prisoner, the maniac, and the wanderer. From the consolations of individual misery, a transition is made to prospects of political improvement in the future state of society-the wide field that is yet open for the progress of humanizing arts among uncivilized nations-from these views of amelioration of society, and the extension of liberty and truth over despotic and barbarous countries, by melancholy contrast of ideas we are led to reflect upon the hard fate of a brave people, recently conspicuous in their struggles for independence-description of the capture of Warsaw, of the last contest of the oppressors and the oppressed, and the massacre of the Polish patriots at the bridge of Prague-apostrophe to the self-interested enemies of human improvement-the wrongs of Africa-the barbarous policy of Europeans in India-prophecy in the Hindoo mythology of the expected descent of the Deity, to redress the miseries of their race, and to take vengeance on the violators of justice and mercy. THE PLEASURES OF HOPE. PART I. Ar summer eve, when Heaven's aerial bow Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky? Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?— "T is distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. Thus, with delight, we linger to survey The promised joys of life's unmeasured way; Thus, from afar, each dim-discover'd scene More pleasing seems than all the past hath been; And every form, that fancy can repair From dark oblivion, glows divinely there. What potent spirit guides the raptured eye |