Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/41

 Be these our arts; and ever may we guard, Ever defend, thee with undaunted heart. Inestimable good! who giv'st us Truth, Whose hand upleads to light, divinest Truth! Array'd in ev'ry charm; whose hand benign Teaches unwear'd Toil to clothe the fields, And on his various fruits inscribes the name Of Property: O nobly hail'd of old By thy majestic daughters, Judah fair, And Tyrus and Sidonia, lovely nymphs, And Libya bright, and all-enchanting Greece, Whose num'rous towns, and isles, and peopled seas, Rejoic'd around her lyre; th' heroic note (Smit with sublime delight) Ausonia caught, And plann'd imperial Rome. Thy hand benign Rear'd up her tow'ry battlements in strength, Bent her wide bridges o'er the swelling stream Of Tuscan Tiber; thine those solemn domes Devoted to the voice of humbler pray'r; And thine those piles undeck'd, capacious, vast, In days of dearth, where tender Charity Dispens'd her timely succours to the poor. Thine, too, those musically-falling founts, To slake the clammy lip; adown they fall, Musical ever, while from yon' blue hills, Dim in the clouds, the radiant aqueducts Turn their innumerable arches o'er The spacious desert, bright'ning in the sun, Proud and more proud in their august approach: High o'er irriguous vales, and woods, and towns, Glide the soft-whisp'ring waters in the wind, And, here united, pour their silver streams Among the figur'd rocks, in murm'ring falls, Musical ever. These thy beauteous works; And what beside felicity could tell