Classic Poem

Yet love to her pure breast was but a name
For kindling knowledge, and for taste refined;
A guiding lamp, whose bright, mysterious flame
Led on to loftier heights the aspiring mind.
Hence flow'd the idiom of a foreign tongue
All smoothly o'er her lip; old history flung
Its annal wide, like banner on the wind,
And o'er the storied page, with rapture wild,
A new existence dawn'd on nature's fervent child.