Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/395

369 Of this dominion over Nature gained,

Men of all lands shall exercise the same

In due proportion to their Country's need;

Learning, though late, that all true glory rests,

All praise, all safety, and all happiness,

Upon the Moral law. Egyptian Thebes;

Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves;

Palmyra, central in the Desart, fell;

And the Arts died by which they had been raised.

—Call Archimedes from his buried Tomb

Upon the plain of vanished Syracuse,

And feelingly the Sage shall make report

How insecure, how baseless in itself,

Is that Philosophy, whose sway is framed

For mere material instruments:—how weak

Those Arts, and high Inventions, if unpropped

By Virtue.—He with sighs of pensive grief,

Amid his calm abstractions, would admit

That not the slender privilege is theirs

To save themselves from blank forgetfulness!"

When from the Wanderer's lips these words had fallen,

I said, "And, did in truth these vaunted Arts