Where virtue, rising from the awful depth
Of truth's mysterious bosom[O 1], doth forsake
The unadorn'd condition of her birth;550
And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues,
Assumes a various feature, to attract,
With charms responsive to each gazer's eye,
The hearts of men. Amid his rural walk,
Th' ingenuous youth whom solitude inspires555
With purest wishes from the pensive shade
Beholds her moving, like a virgin-muse
That wakes her lyre to some indulgent theme
Of harmony and wonder: while among
The herd of servile minds, her strenuous form560
Indignant flashes on the patriot's eye,
And thro' the rolls of memory appeals
To ancient honour; or in act serene,
Yet watchful, raises the majestic sword
Of public pow'r, from dark ambition's reach565
To guard the sacred volume of the laws.
Genius of ancient Greece! whose faithful steps
Well-pleas'd I follow thro' the sacred paths
- ↑ Where virtue rising from the awful depth
of truth's mysterious bosom, &c.] according to the opinion of those who assert moral obligation to be founded on an immutable and universal law, and that pathetic feeling which is usually call'd the moral sense, to be determin'd by the peculiar temper of the imagination and the earliest associations of ideas.
