Yes! and he learn'd her terrors to despise;
When stung by thought, to soothing books he fled,
And grew composed and hardened as he read;
Tales of Voltaire, and essays gay and slight,
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Pleased him and shone with their phosphoric light;
Which, though it rose from objects vile and base,
Where'er it came threw splendour on the place,
And was that light which the deluded youth,
And this grey sinner, deem'd the light of truth.