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| DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless Power, | |
| Thou tamer of the human breast, | |
| Whose iron scourge and torturing hour, | |
| The bad affright, afflict the best! | |
| Bound in thy adamantine chain | 5 |
| The proud are taught to taste of pain, | |
| And purple tyrants vainly groan | |
| With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. | |
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| When first thy Sire to send on earth | |
| Virtue, his darling child, design’d, | 10 |
| To thee he gave the heavenly birth, | |
| And bade to form her infant mind. | |
| Stern rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore | |
| With patience many a year she bore: | |
| What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know, | 15 |
| And from her own she learn’d to melt at others’ woe. | |
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| Scared at thy frown terrific, fly | |
| Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood, | |
| Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, | |
| And leave us leisure to be good. | 20 |
| Light they disperse, and with them go | |
| The summer friend, the flattering foe: | |
| By vain Prosperity received, | |
| To her they vow their truth, and are again believed. | |
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| Wisdom in sable garb array’d, | 25 |
| Immersed in rapturous thought profound, | |
| And Melancholy, silent maid, | |
| With leaden eye, that loves the ground, | |
| Still on thy solemn steps attend: | |
| Warm Charity, the general friend, | 30 |
| With Justice, to herself severe, | |
| And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. | |
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| Oh, gently on thy suppliant’s head, | |
| Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand! | |
| Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, | 35 |
| Nor circled with the vengeful band | |
| (As by the impious thou art seen) | |
| With thundering voice, and threatening mien, | |
| With screaming horror’s funeral cry, | |
| Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty. | 40 |
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| Thy form benign, Oh Goddess! wear, | |
| Thy milder influence impart, | |
| Thy philosophic train be there | |
| To soften, not to wound my heart. | |
| The generous spark extinct revive, | 45 |
| Teach me to love and to forgive, | |
| Exact my own defects to scan, | |
| What others are, to feel, and know myself a Man. | |
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