Page:Vida's Art of Poetry.djvu/38

As high o'er all in eloquence he stood,
As Rome o'er all the nations she subdu'd.
Let him read men and manners, and explore
The site and distances from shore to shore;
Then let him travel, or to maps repair,
And see imagin'd cities rising there;
Range with his eyes the earth's fictitious ball,
And pass o'er figur'd worlds that hang the wall.
Some in the bloody shock of aims appear,
To paint the native horrors of the war;
Thro' charging hosts they rush, before they write,
And plunge in all the tumult of the fight.
But since our lives contracted in their date
By scanty bounds, and circumscrib'd by fate,
Can never launch thro' all the depths of arts,
Ye youths, touch only the material parts;
There stop your labour, there your search controul,
And draw from thence a notion of the whole.
From distant climes when the rich merchants come,
To bring the wealth of foreign regions home;
Content the friendly harbors to explore,
They only touch upon the winding shore;