So Hesper taught; and farther had pursued A theme so grateful as a world renew'd; But dubious thoughts disturb'd the Hero's breast, Who thus with modest mien the Seer addrest: Say, friend of man, in this unbounded range, Where error vagrates and illusions change, What hopes to see his baleful blunders cease, And earth commence that promised age of peace? Like a loose pendulum his mind is hung, From wrong to wrong by ponderous passion swung, It vibrates wide, and with unceasing flight Sweeps all extremes and scorns the mean of right. Tho in the times you trace he seems to gain A steadier movement and a path more plain, And tho experience will have taught him then To mark some dangers, some delusions ken, Yet who can tell what future shocks may spread New shades of darkness round his lofty head, Plunge him again in some broad gulph of woes, Where long and oft he struggled, wreck'd and rose? What strides he took in those gigantic times That sow'd with cities all his orient climes! When earth's proud floods he tamed, made many a shore, And talk'd with heaven from Babel's glittering tower! Did not his Babylon exulting say, I sit a queen, for ever stands my sway? Thebes, Memphis, Nineveh, a countless throng, Caught the same splendor and return'd the song; Each boasted, promised o'er the world to rise, Spouse of the sun, eternal as the skies. Where shall we find them now? the very shore Where Ninus rear'd his empire is no more: The dikes decay'd, a putrid marsh regains The sunken walls, the tomb-encumber'd plains, Pursues the dwindling nations where they shrink, And skirts with slime its deleterious brink. The fox himself has fled his gilded den, Nor holds the heritage he won from men; Lapwing and reptile shun the curst abode, And the foul dragon, now no more a god, Trails off his train; the sickly raven flies; A wide strong-stencht Avernus chokes the skies. So pride and ignorance fall a certain prey To the stanch bloodhound of despotic sway. Then past a long drear night, with here and there A doubtful glimmering from a single star; Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse the gleam increase, Till dawns at last the effulgent morn of Greece, Here all his Muses meet, all arts combine To nerve his genius and his works refine; Morals and laws and arms, and every grace That e'er adorn'd or could exalt the race, Wrought into science and arranged in rules, Swell the proud splendor of her cluster'd schools, Build and sustain the state with loud acclaim, And work those deathless miracles of fame That stand unrivall'd still; for who shall dare Another field with Marathon compare? Who speaks of eloquence or sacred song, But calls on Greece to modulate his tongue? And where has man's fine form so perfect shone In tint or mould, in canvass or in stone?