A butcher’s son from Newcastle who became a physician to the Queen, Akenside made his name with the blank-verse Pleasures of Imagination, a philosophical poem on beauty, the mind and the passions. This edition by George Gilfillan prints it with his odes, including the hymn to cheerfulness and the ode to sleep, and a biographical memoir.
An important voice in eighteenth-century poetry between Pope and the Romantics, for readers who enjoy the philosophical verse of the age. Download the free EPUB.