Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

Mark Akenside

1721–1770

Mark Akenside (1721–1770) was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a butcher, and studied at Edinburgh and Leiden before practising as a physician in London. He was lame from a boyhood accident.

His blank-verse The Pleasures of Imagination (1744), a philosophical poem on the sources of aesthetic pleasure, made him famous when he was in his early twenties, and he later reworked it at length. His Odes and Hymn to the Naiads share its classical models and its enthusiasm for liberty.

Poems (53)

  1. The Pleasures of Imagination, Book I
  2. The Pleasures of Imagination, Book II
  3. The Pleasures of Imagination, Book III
  4. To a Friend, Unsuccessful in Love
  5. Against Suspicion
  6. Hymn to Cheerfulness
  7. On the Use of Poetry
  8. To the Muse
  9. On Love, to a Friend
  10. To the Evening Star
  11. On a Sermon Against Glory
  12. The Remonstrance of Shakespeare
  13. To Sleep
  14. To the Cuckoo
  15. On Love of Praise
  16. At Study
  17. The Complaint
  18. Hymn to the Naiads
  19. An Epistle to Curio
  20. The Virtuoso
  21. Ambition and Content: A Fable
  22. The Poet: A Rhapsody
  23. A British Philippic
  24. Hymn to Science
  25. Love: An Elegy
  26. To Cordelia
  27. Song
  28. Ode 1.1: Preface
  29. Ode 1.2: On the Winter-Solstice
  30. Ode 1.4: Affected Indifference. To the Same
  31. Ode 1.8: On Leaving Holland
  32. Ode 1.12: To Sir Francis Henry Drake, Baronet
  33. Ode 1.13: On Lyric Poetry
  34. Ode 1.14: To the Honourable Charles Townshend; from the Country
  35. Ode 1.16: To Caleb Hardinge, M. D.
  36. Ode 1.18: To the Right Honourable Francis, Earl of Huntingdon
  37. Ode 2.4: To the Honourable Charles Townshend; in the Country
  38. Ode 2.6: To William Hall, Esquire; with the Works of Chaulieu
  39. Ode 2.7: To the Right Reverend Benjamin, Lord Bishop of Winchester
  40. Ode 2.8: If rightly tuneful bards decide
  41. Ode 2.10: To Thomas Edwards, Esq.; on the Late Edition of Mr. Pope's Works
  42. Ode 2.11: To the Country Gentlemen of England
  43. Ode 2.12: On Recovering from a Fit of Sickness; in the Country
  44. Ode 2.13: To the Author of Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg
  45. Ode 2.15: On Domestic Manners
  46. For a Grotto
  47. For a Statue of Chaucer at Woodstock
  48. Inscription 3: Whoe'er thou art whose path in summer lies
  49. Inscription 4: O youths and virgins: O declining eld
  50. For a Column at Runnymede
  51. The Wood Nymph
  52. Inscription 8: Ye powers unseen, to whom, the bards of Greece
  53. Inscription 9: Me though in life's sequester'd vale

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