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THE

MINSTREL;

OR,

THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.

BOOK II.

II.

But sure to foreign climes we need not range,
Nor search the ancient records of our race,
To learn the dire effects of time and change,
Which in ourselves, alas, we daily trace.
Yet at the darken'd eye, the wither'd face,
Or hoary hair, I never will repine:

But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace,
Of condour, love, or sympathy divine,

Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame is mine.

III.

So I, obsequious to Truth's dread command,
Shall here without reluctance change my lay,
And smite the Gothic lyre with harsher hand;
Now when I leave that flowery path for aye
Of childhood, where I sported many a day,
Warbling and sauntering carelessly along;
Where every face was innocent and gay,
Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue,

Sweet, wild, and artless all, as Edwin's infant song.

THE

MINSTREL;

OR,

THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.

THE SECOND BOOK.

I.

Or chance or change O let not man complain,
Else shall he never, never cease to wail;

For, from the imperial dome, to where the swain

Rears the lone cottage in the silent dale,

All feel th' assault of fortune's fickle gale;

Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doom'd; Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale, And gulphs the mountain's mighty mass entomb'd, And where th' Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloom'd*...

*See Plato's Timeus.

II.

But sure to foreign climes we need not range,
Nor search the ancient records of our race,
To learn the dire effects of time and change,
Which in ourselves, alas, we daily trace.
Yet at the darken'd eye, the wither'd face,
Or hoary hair, I never will repine :

But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace,
Of condour, love, or sympathy divine,

Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame is mine.

III.

So I, obsequious to Truth's dread command,
Shall here without reluctance change my lay,
And smite the Gothic lyre with harsher hand;
Now when I leave that flowery path for aye
Of childhood, where I sported many a day,
Warbling and sauntering carelessly along;
Where every face was innocent and gay,
Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue,

Sweet, wild, and artless all, as Edwin's infant song.

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