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The poet dream'd, or tun'd his song, At which the Dryads would appear, And sylvan boys would run to hear, Dim are your glories, sunk your name, And all has perish'd but the fame

That never shall thro' time decay

While nations rise and melt away.
Fraught with the treasures of the past
As years to years succeeding haste,
And tho' in every age we trace
A moral for the coming race,
In vain we backward cast our eyes
On follies, crimes, and miseries,
From war and havoc shrink in vain,
And all is acted o'er again.
Dead are the bards-but living lays
Resound, and tell of early days,
And still the trembling chords prolong
Untouch'd the power of antient song ;
Dear is their minstrelsy, that floats
In solemn, sweet, and liquid notes,
That registers the orphan's sigh,
The plighted lover's perjury,
The pride of riches and of power,
The mirthful, and the mournful hour,
That paints the virgin in her bloom,
The triumph, banquet, and the tomb,

The deeds of mighty chiefs, who broke The tyrant's chain, and spurn'd his yoke, And then by beauty's arms subdued Were led in willing servitude.

Dear are the records, that unfold

The pleasures and the cares of old,
And bid us in the past descry
The visions of futurity.

NOTES.

E

NOTES.

NOTE A. (to the Preface.)

DOCTOR JOHNSON threw together the substance of his Latin Epitaph on Goldsmith into the more compressed form of a Greek Epigram. These lines and his translation of a noble passage in the Medea of Euripides, which has been frequently and in vain attempted, are not sufficiently known. They are not printed with his works, although the latter is as successful as any thing that he has left us. They are inserted from a persuasion that they will be new to many persons, and agreeable to all.

Τον ταφον ἐισοραας τον Ολιβάριοιο" Κονιην

Αφροσι μη σεμνην Ξεινε πόδεσσι πάλει.

Οισι μεμηλε φυσις, μετρων χαρις, έργα παλαίων
Κλαίετε ποιητην, ίςορικον, φυσικον.

Thou se'st the tomb of Oliver: retire,

Unholy feet, nor o'er his ashes tread.

Ye whom the deeds of old, verse, nature, fire,
Mourn Nature's priest, the bard, historian, dead.

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