SUPPOSE a painter to a human head Should join a horse's neck, and wildly spread THE tragic bard, a goat his humble prize, HOR. A lawless crowd, with wine and feasting warm. HOR. THESPIS, inventor of dramatic art, Convey'd his vagrant actors in a cart, High o'er the crowd the mimic tribe appear'd, And play'd and sung, with lees of wine besmear'd. THEN Eschylus, a decent vizard used, HOR. Built a low stage; the flowing robe diffus'd; HOR. THE Comic poets, in its earliest age, Who form'd the manners of the Grecian stage— Rake, cut-throat, thief, whatever was his crime, HOR. WITH passions not my own who fires my heart, 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 VIRG. THE WOes of Troy once more she 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. HOM. 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, song, VIDA. THE wave that bore him, backward shrank appal'd. RACINE. BUT Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train, When from the fields o'erflow'd, his vagrant streams return. VIRG. So Philomela froin 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, HOM. 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.' THE window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray, Not with that face, so servile, and so gay, Of all the fish that graze beneath the flood, 1 See Goldsmith's Life, p. 64. ed. 1821. |