To me most fatal, me it most concerns. The trial hath indamaged thee no way, Rather more honour left and more esteem; Me naught advantaged, missing what I aimed. Therefore let pass, as they are transitory, The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more 210 Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not. And thou thyself seem’st otherwise inclined Than to a worldly crown, addicted more To contemplation and profound dispute; As by that early action may be judged, When, slipping from thy mother’s eye, thou went’st Alone into the Temple, there wast found Among the gravest Rabbies, disputant On points and questions fitting Moses’ chair, Teaching, not taught. The childhood shews the man, 220 As morning shews the day. Be famous, then, By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o’er all the world In knowledge; all things in it comprehend. All knowledge is not couched in Moses’ law, The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote; The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach To admiration, led by Nature’s light; And with the Gentiles much thou must converse, Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean’st. 230 Without their learning, how wilt thou with them, Or they with thee, hold conversation meet? How wilt thou reason with them, how refute Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes? Error by his own arms is best evinced. Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold Where on the AEgean shore a city stands, Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil— Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 240 And Eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, City or suburban, studious walks and shades. See there the olive-grove of Academe, Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls His whispering stream. Within the walls then view 250 The schools of ancient sages—his who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next. There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes, And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called, Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own. 260 Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, High actions and high passions best describing. Thence to the famous Orators repair, Those ancient whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democraty, Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece 270 To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne. To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear, From heaven descended to the low-roofed house