Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, allother inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spellinghas been maintained.
T. Bensley, Printer, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London.
A POEM,
WITH PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES.
BY
AUTHOR OF THE BOTANIC GARDEN, OF ZOONOMIA, AND OFPHYTOLOGIA.
Unde hominum pecudumque genus, vitæque volantum,
Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus?
Igneus est illis vigor, & cælestis origo.
Virg. Æn. VI. 728.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD,
BY T. BENSLEY, BOLT COURT, FLEET STREET.
1803.
The Poem, which is here offered to the Public, does not pretend toinstruct by deep researches of reasoning; its aim is simply to amuseby bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and sublimeimages of the operations of Nature in the order, as the Authorbelieves, in which the progressive course of time presented them.
The Deities of Egypt, and afterwards of Greece, and Rome, were derivedfrom men famous in those early times, as in the ages of hunting,pasturage, and agriculture. The histories of some of their actionsrecorded in Scripture, or celebrated in the heathen mythology, areintroduced, as the Author hopes, without impropriety into his accountof those remote periods of human society.
In the Eleusinian mysteries the philosophy of the works of Nature,with the origin and progress of society, are believed to have beentaught by allegoric scenery explained by the Hierophant to theinitiated, which gave rise to the machinery of the following Poem.
Priory near Derby,
Jan. 1, 1802.
I. Subject proposed.Life, Love, and Sympathy 1.Four past Ages, a fifth beginning 9.Invocation to Love 15.II. Bowers of Eden, Adam and Eve 33.Temple of Nature 65.Time chained by Sculpture 75.Proteus bound by Menelaus 83.Bowers of Pleasure 89.School of Venus 97.Court of Pain 105.Den of Oblivion 113.Muse of Melancholy 121.Cave of Trophonius 125.Shrine of Nature 129.Eleusinian Mysteries 137.III.Morning 155.Procession of Virgins 159.Address to the Pries