Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/78

64 The big distress? or would'st thou then exchange Those heart-ennobling sorrows for the lot Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd Of mute barbarians bending to his nod, And bears aloft his gold-invested front, And says within himself, "I am a king, And wherefore should the clam'rous voice of woe Intrude upon mine ear?–The baleful dreggs Of these late ages, this inglorious draught Of servitude and folly, have not yet, Blest be th' eternal ruler of the world! Defil'd to such a depth of sordid shame The native honours of the human soul, Nor so effac'd the image of its sire.



ARGU-