O gracious God! how far have we Prophaned thy heavenly gift of poesy? Made prostitute and profligate the muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use, Whose harmony was first ordained above For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love? O wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age, (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own) T'increase the streaming ordures of the stage? What can we say t'excuse our second fall? Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all: Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled, Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.[81] V. Art she had none, yet wanted none; For nature did that want supply: So rich in treasures of her own, She might our boasted stores defy: Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only born. Her morals, too, were in her bosom bred, By great examples daily fed, What in the best of books, her father's life, she read: And to be read herself she need not fear; Each test, and every light, her muse will bear, Though Epictetus with his lamp were there. E'en love (for love sometimes her muse exprest) Was but a lambent flame which played about her breast: Light as the vapours of a morning dream, So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream. VI. Born to the spacious empire of the Nine, One would have thought she should have been content To manage well that mighty government; But what can young ambitious souls confine? To the next realm she stretched her sway, } For Painture near adjoining lay, } A plenteous province, and alluring prey. } A chamber of dependencies was framed, (As conquerors will never want pretence, When armed, to justify the offence,) And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claimed. The country open lay without defence; For poets frequent inroads there had made, And perfectly could represent The shape, the face, with every lineament, And all the large domains which the Dumb Sister swayed; All bowed beneath her government, Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went. Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed, And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind. The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks, And fruitful plains and barren rocks, Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear, The bottom did the top appear; Of deeper too and ampler floods, Which, as in mirrors, shewed the woods; Of lofty trees, with sacred shades, And perspectives of pleasant glades, Where nymphs of brightest form appear, } And shaggy satyrs standing near, } Which them at once admire and fear. } The ruins too of some majestic piece, Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece, Whose statues, frizes, columns, broken lie,