Poem by Mark Akenside

Taste

What, then, is taste but those internal powers,
Active and strong, and feeling alive
To each fine impulse? a discerning sense
Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust
From things deformed, or disarranged and gross
In species. This nor gems nor stores of gold,
Nor purple state nor culture can bestow;
But God alone, when first His active hand
Imprints the secret bias of the soul. 

1. For a Statue of Chaucer at Woodstock
2. The Virtuoso; in imitation of Spencer's Style and Stanza
3. Ode 1. Allusion to Horace
4. Ode 4. To a Gentleman whose Mistress had married an Old Man
5. The Complaint

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