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And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.

Nor less inspire my conduct than my song; Teach my best reason, reason; my best will

Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve 50 Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear. Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, poured

On this devoted head, be poured in vain.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,

How complicate, how wonderful is man! How passing wonder He who made him such!

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Who centered in our make such strange
extremes,
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds,
Distinguished link in being's endless chain,
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorbed, 75
Though sullied and dishonored, still divine,
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory, a frail child of dust,
Helpless immortal, insect infinite,
A worm, a god!-I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost, at home a stranger.
Thought wanders up and down, surprised,
aghast,

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Some flee the city, some the hermitage, Their aims as various as the roads they

take

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Thy long-extended realms, and rueful Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious

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Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds.

No other merriment, dull tree! is thine. See yonder hallowed fane;-the pious work

Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot,

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And buried midst the wreck of things Whistling aloud to bear his courage up, And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones,

which were;

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There lie interred the more illustrious

dead.

The wind is up: hark! how it howls! Methinks

Till now I never heard a sound so dreary: Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird,

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(With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown,)

That tell in homely phrase who lie below. Sudden he starts, and hears, or thinks he

hears,

1 cowering.

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O'er some new-opened grave; and (strange Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

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IO

If ought of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,

Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,

O nymph reserved, while now the brighthaired sun

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Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy

skirts,

With brede1 ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed:

Now air is hushed, save where the weakeyed bat,

With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern

wing,

Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn,

IO

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,

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Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale

May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return!

1 embroidery.

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THE PASSIONS

AN ODE FOR MUSIC

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When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse's painting;
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined:
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound;
And as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each, for madness ruled the hour,
Would prove his own expressive power.

ΙΟ

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Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of Last came Joy's ecstatic trial.

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He, with viny crown advancing,

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