from the grave of Pastora rises a light that forms a star; and where Amaryllis wept for Amyntas, from every tear sprung up a violet.
But William is his hero, and of William he will sing:
The hovering winds on downy wings shall wait around,
And catch, and waft to foreign lands, the flying sound.
It cannot but be proper to shew what they shall have to catch and carry:
’T was now, when flowery lawns the prospect made,
And flowing brooks beneath a forest shade,
A lowing heifer, loveliest of the herd,
Stood feeding by; while two fierce bulls prepar’d
Their armed heads for fight; by fate of war to prove
The victor worthy of the fair-one’s love.
Unthought presage of what met next my view;
For soon the shady scene withdrew.
And now, for woods, and fields, and springing flowers,
Behold a town arise, bulwark’d with walls and lofty towers;
Two rival armies all the plain o’erspread,
Each in battalia rang’d, and shining arms array’d;
With eager eyes beholding both from far,
Namur, the prize and mistress of the war.
The Birth of the Muse is a miserable fiction. One good line it has, which was borrowed
