Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms1 and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes,2 thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received,
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
High actions and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece,
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne:
To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heav'n descended to the low-rooft house
Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools
Of Academics 3 old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe;

3

These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire join'd.

To whom our Saviour thus sagely replied.
Think not but that I know these things, or think
I know them not; not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought: he who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light,

3. the same is Logi granted me
erine e ric feams,
A turing in.
The int and viet of them all poissel
Is how this only that he nothing neve
The next to failing él and snottheoreetts

A find out dosited all things dough plan sose,
Ofters in vite placed flicity,

But vitve jound with rites and bong life;
In cugocal please he and careless case;
The Stic last in philosophie prite

By him call'd vide; and his irons an
Wine, perfect in him, and all pomening
Equal to Gon, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing Gon norman, contemning all o
Wealth, please, pain or torment, death and life,
Which when he lists he leaves, or boasts he can,
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to erade.
Alas! what can they teach and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of GoD much more, so
And how the world began, and how man fell
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to GoD give none,usi
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and fate, as one regardless quite mit I
Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud. However, many books
Wise men have said are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
"pirit and judgment equal or superior, ot
that he brings what need he elsewhere seek ?)

i

4 An allusion to the fable of Ixion, who embraced a cloud which had the form of Juno. - NEWTON,

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;
As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore.
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace? all our law and story strew'd

With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,

That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived;
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities and their own

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright, and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies, and his saints:
Such are from GOD inspired, not such from thee,
'Unless where moral virtue is express'd

By light of nature not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extol'st, as those
The top of eloquence, statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government
In their majestic unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our law best form a king.
So spake the Son of GOD; but Satan, now,

giom they portend thee, but what kingdom,

Ja ir alegoric, I discem not,

vhen, eternal sare, as without end,

hout beginning; for no date prefin

treets me in the starry rubric set.

So saying he took, for still he knew his pow'r

Not yet expired, and to the wilderness

Brought back the Son of GOD, and left him there,
Reigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,
As daylight sunk, and brought in low'ring Night,
owy offspring, unsubstantial both,

ere of light and absent day.

meek and with untroubled mind
jaunt, though hurried sore,

old betook him to his rest,

ler some concourse of shades,

ing arms thick intertwined might shield

From dews and damps of night his shelter'd head,
But shelter'd slept in vain, for at his head

The tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturb'd his sleep and either tropic now

:

'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n the clouds
From many a horrid rift abortive pour'd

Fierce rain with light'ning mix'd, water with fire
In ruin reconciled: nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
From the four hinges' of the world, and fell
On the vext wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer: ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st
Unshaken; nor yet staid the terror there,

Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round

Environ'd thee; some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriek'd,
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace.
Thus pass'd the night so foul, till morning fair
Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,
Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar
Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the fiend had raised
To tempt the Son of GOD with terrors dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dried the wet
From drooping plant or drooping tree; the birds,
Who all things now behold more fresh and green,
After a night of storm so ruinous,

Clear'd up their choicest notes in bush and spray,
To gratulate the sweet return of morn:
Nor yet amidst this joy and brightest morn
Was absent, after all his mischief done,
The prince of darkness, glad would also seem
Of this fair change, and to our Saviour came,

1 The cardinal points-north, south, east, and west. Cardo, from whence

the word cardinal is derived, signifies a hinge.