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I. 3.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,

Temper'd to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet-green

The rofy-crowned Loves are feen

On Cytherea's day,

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;

Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:
To brifk notes in cadence beating

+ Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting ftrains their Queen's approach de

clare :

Where'er fhe turns the Graces homage pay. With arms fublime, that float upon the air. In gliding state fhe wins her easy way:

O'er

* Power of harmony to produce all the graces

of motion in the body.

+ Μαρμαρυγὰς θηεῖτο ποδῶν· θαύμαζε δὲ θυμῶ.

Homer, Od. e.

O'er her warm cheek, and rifing bofom, move

The bloom of young Defire, and purple light of
Love.

II. 1

+ Man's feeble race what Ills await,

Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,

Difeafe, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, fad refuge from the ftorms of Fate! The fond complaint, my Song, difprove,

And juftify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Mufe?

Night, and all her fickly dews,

Her

* Λάμπει δ' ἐπι πορφυρέησι

Пlapsinos pus sparos. Phrynichus, apud Athenæum.

+ To compenfate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Mufe was given to Mankind by the fame Providence that fends the Day by its chearful prefence to difpel the gloom and terrors of the Night.

Her Spectres wan, and Birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary fky:

*Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring fhafts of

war.

II. 2.

In climes beyond the folar † road,

Where fhaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains

roam,

The Mufe has broke the twilight-gloom

To chear the fhiv'ring Native's dull abode.

And

* Or feen the Morning's well-appointed Star Come marching up the eastern hills afar.

Cowley. + Extenfive influence of poetic Genius over the remoteft and most uncivilized nations: its connection with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erfe, Norwegian, and Welch Fragments, the Lapland and American fongs.]

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"Extra anni folifque vias-"

Tutta lontana dal camin del fole."

Virgil.

Petrarch, Canzon 2.

And oft, beneath the od'rous fhade

Of Chili's boundless forefts laid,

She deigns to hear the favage Youth repeat

In loose numbers wildly fweet,

Their feather-cinctured Chiefs, and dufky Loves.

Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's fteep, Ifles, that crown th' Egæan deep,

Fields,

* Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Tho. Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenfer imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them: but this School expired foon after the Restoration, and a new one arofe on the French model, which has fubfifted ever fince.

Fields, that cool Iliffus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves

In lingering Lab'rinths creep,

How do your tuneful Echos languish,
Mute, but to the voice of Anguish?

Where each old poetic Mountain
Inspiration breath'd around:

Ev'ry fhade and hallow'd Fountain

Murmur'd deep a folemn found:

Till the fad Nine in Greece's evil hour
Left their Parnaffus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Pow'r,
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They fought, oh Albion! next thy fea-encircled

coaft.

III. 1.

Far from the fun and fummer gale,

In thy green lap was Nature's * Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To Him the mighty Mother did unveil

*Shakespeare.

Her

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