And teach the Muse her lore; already strove Their long-divided honours to unite, While tempering this deep argument we sang Of Truth and Beauty. Now the same glad task Impends; now urging our ambitious toil, We hasten to recount the various springs Of adventitious pleasure, which adjoin 70 Their grateful influence to the prime effect Of objects grand or beauteous, and enlarge The complicated joy. The sweets of sense, Do they not oft with kind accession flow, To raise harmonious Fancy's native charm? So while we taste the fragrance of the rose, Glows not her blush the fairer? While we view Amid the noontide walk a limpid rill Gush through the trickling herbage, to the thirst Of summer yielding the delicious draught 80 Of cool refreshment, o'er the mossy brink Shines not the surface clearer, and the waves With sweeter music murmur as they flow? Nor this alone; the various lot of life Oft from external circumstance assumes A moment's disposition to rejoice In those delights which, at a different hour, Would pass unheeded. Fair the face of Spring, When rural songs and odours wake the morn, To every eye; but how much more to his 90 Round whom the bed of sickness long diffused Its melancholy gloom! how doubly fair, When first with fresh-born vigour he inhales The balmy breeze, and feels the blessed sun Warm at his bosom, from the springs of life Chasing oppressive damps and languid pain! Or shall I mention, where celestial Truth Her awful light discloses, to bestow A more majestic pomp on Beauty's frame? For man loves knowledge, and the beams of Truth 100 More welcome touch his understanding's eye, Than all the blandishments of sound his ear, Than all of taste his tongue. Nor ever yet The melting rainbow's vernal-tinctured hues To me have shown so pleasing, as when first The hand of Science pointed out the path In which the sunbeams, gleaming from the west, Fall on the watery cloud, whose darksome veil Involves the orient; and that trickling shower Piercing through every crystalline convex 110 Of clustering dewdrops to their flight opposed, Recoil at length where concave all behind The internal surface of each glassy orb Repels their forward passage into air; That thence direct they seek the radiant goal From which their course began; and, as they strike In different lines the gazer's obvious eye, Assume a different lustre, through the brede Of colours changing from the splendid rose To the pale violet's dejected hue. 120