BOOK I 

 With what attractive charms this goodly frame
 Of Nature touches the consenting hearts
 Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
 Which beauteous imitation thence derives
 To deck the poet's, or the painter's toil;
 My verse unfolds. Attend, ye gentle pow'rs
 Of musical delight! and while I sing
 Your gifts, your honours, dance around my strain.
 Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful breast,
 Indulgent Fancy! from the fruitful banks
 Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull
 Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
 Where Shakspeare lies, be present: and with thee
 Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings
 Wafting ten thousand colours through the air,
 Which, by the glances of her magic eye,
 She blends and shifts at will, through countless forms,
 Her wild creation. Goddess of the lyre,
 Which rules the accents of the moving sphere,
 Wilt thou, eternal Harmony! descend
 And join this festive train? for with thee comes
 The guide, the guardian of their lovely sports,
 Majestic Truth; and where Truth deigns to come,
 Her sister Liberty will not be far.
 Be present all ye genii, who conduct
 The wandering footsteps of the youthful bard,
 New to your springs and shades: who touch his ear
 With finer sounds: who heighten to his eye
 The bloom of Nature, and before him turn
 The gayest, happiest attitude of things.

...
 Or shall I mention, where celestial Truth
 Her awful light discloses, to bestow
 A more majestic pomp on Beauty's frame?
 For man loves knowledge, and the beams of Truth
 More welcome touch his understanding's eye,
 Than all the blandishments of sound his ear,
 Than all of taste his tongue. Nor ever yet
 The melting rainbow's vernal-tinctur'd hues
 To me have shone so pleasing, as when first
 The hand of Science pointed out the path
 In which the sun-beams gleaming from the west
 Fall on the watery cloud, whose darksome veil
 Involves the orient; and that trickling shower
 Piercing through every crystalline convex
 Of clustering dew-drops to their flight oppos'd,
 Recoil at length where concave all behind
 The internal surface on each glassy orb
 Repeals their forward passage into air;
 That thence direct they seek the radiant goal
 From which their course began; and, as they strike
 In different lines the gazer's obvious eye,
 Assume a different lustre, through the brede
 Of colours changing from the splendid rose
 To the pale violet's dejected hue.