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$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$
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 ^[1] 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,$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$
The reign of Pluto, the Tartarean lakes,
The Furies dreadful with their curling snakes.

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1. All these particulars, to the end of this paragraph, are taken from Homer and Virgil.

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