Page:The Pleasures of Memory (Rogers).djvu/24

 And as his youth in sweet delusion hung, Where once a taught, a  sung; Who now but meets him musing when he roves His ruin'd Tusculan's romantic groves? In Rome's great forum, who but hears him roll His moral thunders o'er the subject soul?
 * And hence that calm delight the portrait gives:

We gaze on every feature till it lives! Still the fond lover views the absent maid; And the lost friend still lingers in his shade! Say why the pensive widow loves to weep, m When on her knee she rocks her babe to sleep: Tremblingly still, she lifts his veil to trace The father's features in his infant face. The hoary grandsire smiles the hour away, Won by the charm of Innocence at play; He bends to meet each artless burst of joy, Forgets his age, and acts again the boy.
 * What tho' the iron school of war erase

Each milder virtue, and each softer grace; What tho' the fiend's torpedo-touch arrest Each gentler, finer impulse of the breast; Still shall this active principle preside, And wake the tear to Pity's self denied.
 * The intrepid Swiss, that guards a foreign shore,

Condemn'd to climb his mountain-cliffs no more, If chance he hears the song so sweetly wild, n Which on those cliffs his infant hours beguil'd, Melts at the long lost scenes that round him rise, And sinks a martyr to repentant sighs.
 * Ask not if courts or camps dissolve the charm:

Say why lov'd his Sabine farm; o Why great, when France and freedom bled, p Sought the lone limits of a forest-shed. When self-corrected mind q The imperial fasces of a world resign'd,