Classic Poem

See what thou wert! by what Platonic round
Art thou in thy first youth and glories found?
Or from thy Muse does this retrieve accrue?
Does she which once inspir'd thee, now renew,
Bringing thee back those golden years which Time
Smooth'd to thy lays, and polish'd with thy rhyme?
Nor is't to thee alone she does convey
Such happy change, but bountiful as day,
On whatsoever reader she does shine,
She makes him like thee, and for ever thine.

And first thy manual op'ning gives to see
Eclipse and suff'rings burnish majesty,
Where thou so artfully the draught hast made
That we best read the lustre in the shade,
And find our sov'reign greater in that shroud:
So lightning dazzles from its night and cloud,
So the First Light Himself has for His throne
Blackness, and darkness his pavilion.

Who can refuse thee company, or stay,
By thy next charming summons forc'd away,
If that be force which we can so resent,
That only in its joys 'tis violent:
Upward thy Eagle bears us ere aware,
Till above storms and all tempestuous air
We radiant worlds with their bright people meet,
Leaving this little all beneath our feet.
But now the pleasure is too great to tell,
Nor have we other bus'ness than to dwell,
As on the hallow'd Mount th' Apostles meant
To build and fix their glorious banishment.
Yet we must know and find thy skilful vein
Shall gently bear us to our homes again;
By which descent thy former flight's impli'd
To be thy ecstacy and not thy pride.
And here how well does the wise Muse demean
Herself, and fit her song to ev'ry scene!
Riot of courts, the bloody wreaths of war,
Cheats of the mart, and clamours of the bar,
Nay, life itself thou dost so well express,
Its hollow joys, and real emptiness,
That Dorian minstrel never did excite,
Or raise for dying so much appetite.

Nor does thy other softer magic move
Us less thy fam'd Etesia to love;
Where such a character thou giv'st, that shame
Nor envy dare approach the vestal dame:
So at bright prime ideas none repine,
They safely in th' eternal poet shine.

Gladly th' Assyrian ph[oe]nix now resumes
From thee this last reprisal of his plumes;
He seems another more miraculous thing,
Brighter of crest, and stronger of his wing,
Proof against Fate in spicy urns to come,
Immortal past all risk of martyrdom.

Nor be concern'd, nor fancy thou art rude
T' adventure from thy Cambrian solitude:
Best from those lofty cliffs thy Muse does spring
Upwards, and boldly spreads her cherub wing.

So when the sage of Memphis would converse
With boding skies, and th' azure universe,
He climbs his starry pyramid, and thence
Freely sucks clean prophetic influence,
And all serene, and rapt and gay he pries
Through the ethereal volume's mysteries,
Loth to come down, or ever to know more
The Nile's luxurious, but dull foggy shore.