Читать книгу The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase - John Gay - Страница 12

How long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays

Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?

Can neither injuries of time, nor age,

Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?

Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote;

Grief chilled his breast, and checked his rising thought;

Pensive and sad, his drooping Muse betrays

The Roman genius in its last decays.

Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possess'd,

And second youth is kindled in thy breast;

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Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,

And England boasts of riches not her own;

Thy lines have heightened Virgil's majesty,

And Horace wonders at himself in thee.

Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle

In smoother numbers, and a clearer style;

And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,

Edges his satire, and improves his rage.

Thy copy casts a fairer light on all,

And still outshines the bright original.

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Now Ovid boasts the advantage of thy song,

And tells his story in the British tongue;

Thy charming verse and fair translations show

How thy own laurel first began to grow;

How wild Lycaon, changed by angry gods,

And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods.

Oh, mayst thou still the noble task prolong,

Nor age nor sickness interrupt thy song!

Then may we wondering read, how human limbs

Have watered kingdoms, and dissolved in streams;

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Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mould

Turned yellow by degrees, and ripened into gold:

How some in feathers, or a ragged hide,

Have lived a second life, and different natures tried.

Then will thy Ovid, thus transformed, reveal

A nobler change than he himself can tell.

Mag. Coll. Oxon, June 2, 1693. The Author's age, 22.