Fair seat of sages, and of bards divine!
Terrestrial residence of all the nine!
Oh! had my ardent, and aspiring youth
Felt, in thy hallowed groves, important truth;
Inhaled, in them , the God's inspiring ray;
Caught the strong thought, and waked the glowing lay;
Then, reason, fancy, happily combined,
And tuneful diction, had my verse refined:
Then would thy liberal sons have raised my fame;
And high above my merit, fixed my name.

But now, my life's, my mind's meridian o'er;
Poetick vigour, active hope, no more;
Thy shades my faint, my setting fires, receive,
Just ere our vital hemisphere they leave.
Yet, could I live, one effort more to make,
For verse's, and for fairer virtue's sake,
(Oh might I fill our ancient province, here ;
And prove, at once, a poet, and a seer!)
As no stiletto e'er appalled my muse,
Of dark assassins, lurking in reviews;
Haply, some verdict, of decisive praise,
Would crown my memory with perpetual bays:
O XFORD herself might mark my merit's tomb;
Restore it's life, and bid it's honours bloom.

Thus (for, like MARO 's swain, an object small
I near a great one place) at DRYDEN 's call,
B RITONS enamoured grew of nature's rules,
And spurned the jargon of the doating schools
(For mildews threaten, still, the laurelled brow;
And ignorance acted, then, like malice, now)
To genius, and to taste, were converts made;
With wonder MILTON 's vast sublime surveyed;
Imbibed seraphick rapture from his page,
To glory rescued from a barbarous age.