Page:Vida's Art of Poetry.djvu/73

 To change its structure be your last delight; Thus spend the day, and exercise the night, Incessant in your toil; but if you choose A larger field and subject for your muse; If scanty limits should the theme confine, Learn with just art to lengthen the design Beyond its native bounds; the roving mind A thousand methods to this end may find; Un-number'd fictions may with truths be join'd. Nature supplies a fund of matter still; Then cull the rich variety at will. See how the bard calls down th' embattled gods, All rang'd in factions from their bright abodes; Who fir'd with mutual hate their arms employ, And in the field declare for Greece or Troy; Till Jove convenes a council to assuage Their rising fury, and suspend their rage; Tho' the blest gods, remov'd from human eyes, Live in immortal ease within the distant skies. And now th' infernal realm his theme he makes, The reign of Pluto, the Tartarean lakes, The Furies dreadful with their curling snakes. He