6
REMAINS OF HESIOD.
With ease of human grandeur shrouds the ray:
With ease on abject darkness pours the day:
Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud;
Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud.
Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear:
Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear:
While I to Perses' heart would fain convey
The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay.
With ease on abject darkness pours the day:
Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud;
Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud.
Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear:
Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear:
While I to Perses' heart would fain convey
The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay.
ples of morality, implanted in the human heart by its author, have in all ages been the same: and Socrates and Confucius might be found to agree, surely without any suspicion of imitation. Many passages of Hesiod may be paralleled with verses in the Psalms and Proverbs: and in the proem under consideration, there seem no grounds for the conjecture of plagiarism from views of the vicissitudes of human condition, and the ordinations of a ruling providence which are continually passing before our eyes, and which must have struck the reasoning and serious part of mankind in all ages. Horace has a similar passage: b. i. od. 34.
The God by sudden turns of fate
Can change the lowest with the loftiest state:
Eclipse of glory the diminish'd ray,
And lift obscurity to day.
Can change the lowest with the loftiest state:
Eclipse of glory the diminish'd ray,
And lift obscurity to day.
Th' Homeric bards, who wont to frame
A motley-woven verse,
Ere they the song rehearse,
Begin from Jove, and prelude with his name.
A motley-woven verse,
Ere they the song rehearse,
Begin from Jove, and prelude with his name.
