Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, For there's a happiness as well as care. Music resembles poetry--in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone can reach If, where the rules not far enough extend (Since rules were made but to promote their end), Some lucky license answer to the full The intent proposed that license is a rule. Thus Pegasus a nearer way to take May boldly deviate from the common track Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend, From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, Which without passing through the judgment gains The heart and all its end at once attains. In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes, Which out of nature's common order rise, The shapeless rock or hanging precipice. But though the ancients thus their rules invade (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made), Moderns beware! or if you must offend Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end, Let it be seldom, and compelled by need, And have, at least, their precedent to plead. The critic else proceeds without remorse, Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force. I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts Those freer beauties, even in them, seem faults Some figures monstrous and misshaped appear, Considered singly, or beheld too near, Which, but proportioned to their light, or place, Due distance reconciles to form and grace. A prudent chief not always must display His powers in equal ranks and fair array, But with the occasion and the place comply. Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly. Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. [180] Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands, Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, [183] Destructive war, and all-involving age. See, from each clime the learned their incense bring; Hear, in all tongues consenting Paeans ring! In praise so just let every voice be joined, And fill the general chorus of mankind. Hail! bards triumphant! born in happier days; Immortal heirs of universal praise! Whose honors with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow; Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, [193] And worlds applaud that must not yet be found! Oh may some spark of your celestial fire, The last, the meanest of your sons inspire, (That, on weak wings, from far pursues your flights, Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes), To teach vain wits a science little known, To admire superior sense, and doubt their own! * * * * * PART II.