LX.

Here pause, my Gothic lyre, a little while.
The leisure hour is all that thou can’st claim.
But on this verse if Montagu should smile,
New strains, ere long, shall animate thy frame:
And his applause to me is more than fame;
For still with truth accords his taste refined.
At lucre or renown let others aim,
I only wish to please the gentle mind,
Whom Nature’s charms inspire, and love of humankind.

THE
MINSTREL;
BOOK SECOND.

Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam,
Rectique cultus pectora roborant.

Horat.

THE
MINSTREL;
OR,
THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.

BOOK SECOND.

I.

Of chance or change, O let not man complain,
Else shall he never never cease to wail:
For, from the imperial dome, to where the swain
Rears the lone cottage in the silent dale,
All feel the assault of fortune’s fickle gale;
Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed;
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale;
And gulfs the mountain’s mighty mass entombed;
And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed.