And cracked and crashed the thickets as they trod.
XXXV.
They gained the height where now the Muses reign—
Where now Brown’s bounty[21] to the human mind
Links earth and heaven; the fruit of honest gain
Moulding the youthful soul, by taste refined,
To truth’s eternal quest.—How poor and vain,
To such high bounty, seems a meaner kind;—
But this in after times;—for forests then
Mantled the height and swarmed with savage men.