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He chose a mournful muse,
Soft pity to infuse:

He sung Darius, great and good,
By too severe a fate,

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood:
Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his alter'd soul

The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

CHORUS.

Revolving in his alter'd soul

The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree:
"Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble,
Honour but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying :
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying.

Lovely Thais sits beside thee;

Take the good the gods provide thee.

The many rend the skies with loud applause:

So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause. The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again.

At length, with love and wine at once opprest,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

CHORUS.

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again.

At length, with love and wine at once opprest,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again :

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

Hark! hark! the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from the dead,

And, amazed, he stares round.

Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries,

See the furies arise!

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair!

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain, And unburied remain

Inglorious on the plain :

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high,

How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods!

The princes applaud with a furious joy,

And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy: Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.

CHORUS.

And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to

Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

[destroy:

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.

Thus long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow,

While organs yet were mute,

Timotheus, to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,

Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;

He raised a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down.

GRAND CHORUS.

At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown
before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown;

He raised a mortal to the skies,

She drew an angel down.

RELIGIO LAICI.

Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta docere.

DIM as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,

Is reason to the soul; and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here-so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's secret head,
And found that one first principle must be ;
But what, or who, that universal HE;
Whether some soul encompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved, yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance

Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance;
Or, this great All was from eternity,—
Not ev❜n the Stagirite himself could see;
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he.
As blindly groped they for a future state;
As rashly judged of Providence and Fate:

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