Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/141

But he the Muse's laurel justly shares,
A Poet he, and touch'd with Heaven's own fire;
Who, with bold rage or solemn pomp of founds,
Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the foul;
500Now tender, plaintive, sweet almost to pain,
In Love dissolves you; now in sprightly strains
Breathes a gay rapture thro' your thrilling breast;
Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad;
Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings.
505Such was the bard, whose heavenly strains of old
Appeas'd the fiend of melancholy Saul.
Such was, if old and heathen same say true,
The man who bade the Theban domes ascend,
And tam'd the savage nations with his song;
510And such the Thracian, whose harmonious lyre,
Tun'd to soft woe, made all the mountains weep;
Sooth'd even th' inexorable powers of Hell,