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THE BIRTH OF MANLY VIRTUE.
INSCRIBED TO LORD CARTERET, 1724.
"Gratior & pulchro veniens in corpore Virtus."Virg.
ONCE on a time, a righteous sage,
Griev'd at the vices of the age,
Applied to Jove with fervent prayer;
"O Jove, if Virtue be so fair
As it was deem'd in former days,
By Plato and by Socrates,
Whose beauties mortal eyes escape,
Only for want of outward shape:
Make then its real excellence,
For once, the theme of human sense;
So shall the eye, by form confin’d,
Direct and fix the wandering mind;
And long deluded mortals see,
With rapture, what they us'd to flee!"
Jove grants the prayer, gives Virtue birth,
And bids him bless and mend the earth.
Behold him blooming fresh and fair,
Now made — ye gods — a son and heir:
An heir: and, stranger yet to hear,
An heir, an orphan of a peer;
But prodigies are wrought, to prove
Nothing impossible to Jove.
Virtue was for this sex design'd,
In mild reproof to womankind;
In manly form to let them see,
The loveliness of modesty,
