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Pursue the present and the past restore,
And Nature's purpose in her steps explore.
Nor you, my Friend, admiring Rome, disdain
Th' Iberian fields and Lusitanian Spain.
While Italy, obscured in tawdry blaze,
A motley, modern character displays,
And languid trims her long exhausted store;
Iberia's fields with rich and genuine ore
Of ancient manners wooe the traveller's eye;
And scenes untraced in every landscape lie.
Here every various dale with lessons fraught
Calls to the wanderer's visionary thought
What mighty deeds the lofty hills of Spain
Of old have witness'd—From the evening main
Her mountain tops the Tyrian pilots saw
In lightnings wrapt, and thrill'd with sacred awe
Through Greece the tales of Gorgons, Hydras spread,
And Geryon dreadful with the triple head;
