See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls His whispering stream; within the walls then view Great Alexander to subdue the world; There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Of moral prudence, with delight received, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne: To sage philosophy next lend thine ear, These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home, To know this only, that he nothing knew; The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits; But virtue join'd with riches and long life; By him call'd virtue; and his virtuous man, Or subtle shifts conviction to evade. Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, An empty cloud. However, many books And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek? 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. |