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| GOLDEN APOLLO, that thro’ heaven wide | |
| Scatter’st the rays of light, and truth’s beams, | |
| In lucent words my darkling verses dight, | |
| And wash my earthy mind in thy clear streams, | |
| That wisdom may descend in fairy dreams, | 5 |
| All while the jocund hours in thy train | |
| Scatter their fancies at thy poet’s feet; | |
| And when thou yields to night thy wide domain, | |
| Let rays of truth enlight his sleeping brain. | |
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| For brutish Pan in vain might thee assay | 10 |
| With tinkling sounds to dash thy nervous verse, | |
| Sound without sense; yet in his rude affray, | |
| (For ignorance is Folly’s leasing nurse | |
| And love of Folly needs none other’s curse) | |
| Midas the praise hath gain’d of lengthen’d ears, 1 | 15 |
| For which himself might deem him ne’er the worse | |
| To sit in council with his modern peers, | |
| And judge of tinkling rimes and elegances terse. | |
| |
| And thou, Mercurius, that with wingèd brow | |
| Dost mount aloft into the yielding sky, | 20 |
| And thro’ Heav’n’s halls thy airy flight dost throw, | |
| Entering with holy feet to where on high | |
| Jove weighs the counsel of futurity; | |
| Then, laden with eternal fate, dost go | |
| Down, like a falling star, from autumn sky, | 25 |
| And o’er the surface of the silent deep dost fly: | |
| |
| If thou arrivest at the sandy shore | |
| Where nought but envious hissing adders dwell, | |
| Thy golden rod, thrown on the dusty floor, | |
| Can charm to harmony with potent spell. | 30 |
| Such is sweet Eloquence, that does dispel | |
| Envy and Hate that thirst for human gore; | |
| And cause in sweet society to dwell | |
| Vile savage minds that lurk in lonely cell. | |
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| O Mercury, assist my lab’ring sense | 35 |
| That round the circle of the world would fly, | |
| As the wing’d eagle scorns the tow’ry fence | |
| Of Alpine hills round his high aëry, | |
| And searches thro’ the corners of the sky, | |
| Sports in the clouds to hear the thunder’s sound, | 40 |
| And see the wingèd lightnings as they fly; | |
| Then, bosom’d in an amber cloud, around | |
| Plumes his wide wings, and seeks Sol’s palace high. | |
| |
| And thou, O warrior maid invincible, | |
| Arm’d with the terrors of Almighty Jove, | 45 |
| Pallas, Minerva, maiden terrible, | |
| Lov’st thou to walk the peaceful solemn grove, | |
| In solemn gloom of branches interwove? | |
| Or bear’st thy Ægis o’er the burning field, | |
| Where, like the sea, the waves of battle move? | 50 |
| Or have thy soft piteous eyes beheld | |
| The weary wanderer thro’ the desert rove? | |
| Or does th’ afflicted man thy heav’nly bosom move? | |
