to my ear the progress of the Mind.
How loves, and tastes, and sympathies commence
From evanescent notices of sense?
How from the yielding touch and rolling eyes
The piles immense of human science rise?--
With mind gigantic steps the puny Elf,
And weighs and measures all things but himself!"

The indulgent Beauty hears the grateful Muse,
Smiles on her pupil, and her task renews. 50
Attentive Nymphs in sparkling squadrons throng,
And choral Virgins listen to the song;
Pleased Fawns and Naiads crowd in silent rings,
And hovering Cupids stretch their purple wings.

II. "FIRST the new actions of the excited sense,
Urged by appulses from without, commence;
With these exertions pain or pleasure springs,
And forms perceptions of external things.
Thus, when illumined by the solar beams,
Yon waving woods, green lawns, and sparkling streams,
In one bright point by rays converging lie 61
Plann'd on the moving tablet of the eye;
The mind obeys the silver goads of light,
And IRRITATION moves the nerves of sight.

[Footnote: _And Irritation moves_, l. 64. Irritation is an
exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium
residing in the muscles or organs of sense in consequence of
the appulses of external bodies. The word perception includes
both the action of the organ of sense in consequence of the
impact of external objects and our attention to that action;
that is, it expresses both the motion of the organ of sense,
or idea, and the pain or pleasure that succeeds or
accompanies it. Irritative ideas are those which are preceded
by irritation, which is excited by objects external to the
organs of sense: as the idea of that tree, which either I
attend to, or which I shun in walking near it without
attention. In the former case it is termed perception, in the
latter it is termed simply an irritative idea.]

"These acts repeated rise from joys or pains,
And swell Imagination's flowing trains;
So in dread dreams amid the silent night
Grim spectre-forms the shuddering sense affright;
Or Beauty's idol-image, as it moves,
Charms the closed eye with graces, smiles, and loves; 70
Each passing form the pausing heart delights,
And young SENSATION every nerve excites.