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 Or from what dark original began The fiery soul; and kindled up the man. Oft' they in odious instances engage, And for examples ransack every age, With every realm; no hero will they pass, But act against the rules of time and place. Avoid, ye youths, these practices, nor raise Your swelling souls to such a thirst of praise. Some bards of eminence there are, we own, Who sing sometimes the journeys of the sun, The rising stars, and labours of the moon: What impulse bids the ocean rise and fall; What motions shake, and rock the trembling ball. Tho' foreign subjects had engag'd their care, The rage, the din, and thunder of the war, Thro' the loud field; the genius of the earth; Or precepts to improve the vegetable birth. Yet 'tis but seldom, and when time and place Require the thing, and reconcile to grace. Those foreign objects necessary seem, And flow, to all appearance, from the theme