Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/41

Be these our arts; and ever may we guard,
Ever defend, thee with undaunted heart.
Inestimable good! who giv'st us Truth, 230
Whose hand upleads to light, divinest Truth!
Array'd in ev'ry charm; whose hand benign
Teaches unwear'd Toil to clothe the fields,
And on his various fruits inscribes the name
Of Property: O nobly hail'd of old 235
By thy majestic daughters, Judah fair,
And Tyrus and Sidonia, lovely nymphs,
And Libya bright, and all-enchanting Greece,
Whose num'rous towns, and isles, and peopled seas,
Rejoic'd around her lyre; th' heroic note 240
(Smit with sublime delight) Ausonia caught,
And plann'd imperial Rome. Thy hand benign
Rear'd up her tow'ry battlements in strength,
Bent her wide bridges o'er the swelling stream
Of Tuscan Tiber; thine those solemn domes 245
Devoted to the voice of humbler pray'r;
And thine those piles undeck'd, capacious, vast,
In days of dearth, where tender Charity
Dispens'd her timely succours to the poor.
Thine, too, those musically-falling founts, 250
To slake the clammy lip; adown they fall,
Musical ever, while from yon' blue hills,
Dim in the clouds, the radiant aqueducts
Turn their innumerable arches o'er
The spacious desert, bright'ning in the sun, 255
Proud and more proud in their august approach:
High o'er irriguous vales, and woods, and towns,
Glide the soft-whisp'ring waters in the wind,
And, here united, pour their silver streams
Among the figur'd rocks, in murm'ring falls,260
Musical ever. These thy beauteous works;
And what beside felicity could tell