Page:Vida's Art of Poetry.djvu/13

Direct his course, and point him out the road
To sing in Epick strains a hero or a god.

What youth, whose gen'rous bosom pants for praise,
Will dare with me to beat those arduous ways?
O'er high Parnassus' painful steeps to go,
And leave the grov'ling multitude below:
Where the glad muses sing, and form the choir,
Where bright Apollo strikes the silver lyre.
Approach thou first, great Francis, nor refuse
To pay due honours to the sacred muse;
While Gallia waits for thy auspicious reign,
Till age compleats the monarch in the man;
Mean time the muse may bring some small relief,
To charm thy anguish, and suspend thy grief;
While guilty fortune's stern decrees detain
Thee, and thy brother in the realms of Spain;
Far, far transported from your native place,
Your country's, father's, and your friends' embrace!
Such are the terms the cruel fates impose
On your great father, struggling with his woes,

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