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"From your Progenitors, have Ye received,
"Fit recompence of new desert? what claim
"Are ye prepared to urge, that my decrees
"For you should undergo a sudden change;
"And the weak functions of one busy day,
"Reclaiming and extirpating, perform
"What all the slowly-moving Years of Time,
"With their united force, have left undone?
"By Nature's gradual processes be taught,
"By Story be confounded. Ye aspire
"Rashly, to fall once more; and that false fruit,
"Which, to your over-weening spirits, yields
"Hope of a flight celestial, will produce
"Misery and shame. But Wisdom of her sons
"Shall not the less, though late, be justified."
Such timely warning," said the Wanderer, "gave
That visionary Voice; and, at this day,
When a Tartarian darkness overspreads
The groaning nations; when the Impious rule,
By will or by established ordinance,
Their own dire agents, and constrain the Good
To acts which they abhor; though I bewail
