Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/41

Book I. Where virtue, rising from the awful depth Of truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake The unadorn'd condition of her birth; And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues, Assumes a various feature, to attract, With charms responsive to each gazer's eye, The hearts of men. Amid his rural walk, Th' ingenuous youth whom solitude inspires With purest wishes from the pensive shade Beholds her moving, like a virgin-muse That wakes her lyre to some indulgent theme Of harmony and wonder: while among The herd of servile minds, her strenuous form Indignant flashes on the patriot's eye, And thro' the rolls of memory appeals To ancient honour; or in act serene, Yet watchful, raises the majestic sword Of public pow'r, from dark ambition's reach To guard the sacred volume of the laws.


 * Genius of ancient Greece! whose faithful steps

Well-pleas'd I follow thro' the sacred paths Rh