Page:Vida's Art of Poetry.djvu/120

We see him now, remissive of his force,
Glide with a low, and inoffensive course;
Stript of the gawdy dress of words he goes,
And scarcely lifts the poem up from prose:
And now he brings with loosen'd reins along
All in a full career the boundless song;
In wide array luxuriantly he pours
A crowd of words, and opens all his stores.
The lavish eloquence redundant flows,
Thick as the fleeces of the winter-snows.
When Jove invests the naked Alps, and sheds
The silent tempest on their hoary heads.
Sometimes the god-like fury he restrains,
Checks his impetuous speed, and draws the reins;
Balanc'd and pois'd, he neither sinks nor soars,
But ploughs the midmost space, and steers between the shores,
And shaves the confines;---'till, all dangers past,
He shoots with joy into the port at last.

For what remains unsung: I now declare
What claims the poet's last and strictest care.
When, all adventures past, his labours tend
In one continu'd order to their end;