THE Comic poets, in its earliest age, Who form'd the manners of the Grecian stage HOR. WITH passions not my own who fires my heart, Who with unreal terrors fills my breast, As with a magic influence possess'd. HOR. BUT God and man, and letter'd post denies POETS would profit or delight mankind, And with the amusing show the instructive join'd. PROFIT and pleasure, mingled thus with art, AT ease reclin’d beneath the verdant shade, VIRG. THESE on the mountain billows hung: to those The yawning waves the yellow sand disclose. VIRG. THE Woes of Troy once more sne begg'd to hear, Once more the mournful tale employ'd his tongue, While in fond rapture on his lips she hung. VIRG. IN shrill-ton'd murmurs sang the twanging bow. HOм. WHATE'ER, when Phoebus bless'd the Arcadian plain, Eurotas heard, and taught his boys the strain, VIRG. SAY, heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse, VIDA THE wave that bore him, backward shrank appal'd. RACINE. BUT Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train, In armour towers the tallest on the plain. When from the fields o'erflow'd, his vagrant streams return. VIRG. So Philomela from the umbrageous wood In strains melodious mourns her tender brood. Snatch'd from the nest by some rude Phrygian's hand, On some lone bough the warbler takes her stand; The livelong nights she mourns the cruel wrong, And hill and dale resound the plaintive song. FOR as a watchman, from some rock on high, O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye, Through such a space of air with thundering sound, At every leap the immortal coursers bound. HOM. So joys the lion, if a branching deer, HOм. EAST, west, and south engage with furious sweep, And from its lowest bed upturn the foaming deep. VIRG. THE sail then Boreas rends with hideous cry, 1 These lines altered from Pope. VIRG. VERSES.1 THE window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray, An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scor'd, Not with that face, so servile and so gay, "Of all the fish that graze beneath the flood, He only ruminates his former food.' 2 1 See Goldsmith's Life, p. 64, ed. 1821. L Addison, in some beautiful Latin lines inserted in the Spectator, is entirely of opinion that birds observe a strict chastity of manners, and never admit the caresses of a different tribe. - (v. vol. vi. No. 412.) CHASTE are their instincts, faithful is their fire, 3 See Goldsmith's An. Nat. vol. v. p. 212. |