Or if Thought’s rolling globe, her circle run,
Turns up old objects to the soul her sun;
Or loves the Muse to walk with conscious pride
O’er the glad scene whence first she rose a bride: 
  Be what it will; late near yon whispering stream,
Where her own Temple was her darling theme;
There first the visionary sound was heard,
When to poetic view the Muse appear’d. 
Such seem’d her eyes, as when an evening ray
Gives glad farewell to a tempestuous day;
Weak is the beam to dry up Nature’s tears,
Still every tree the pendent sorrow wears;
Such are the smiles where drops of crystal show
Approaching joy at strife with parting woe. 
  As when, to scare th’ungrateful or the proud,
Tempests long frown, and thunder threatens loud,
Till the blest sun, to give kind dawn of grace,
Darts weeping beams across Heaven’s watery face;
When soon the peaceful bow unstring’d is shown,
A sign God’s dart is shot, and wrath o’erblown: 
Such to unhallow’d sight the Muse divine
Might seem, when first she raised her eyes to mine. 
  What mortal change does in thy face appear,
Lost youth, she cried, since first I met thee here! 
With how undecent clouds are overcast
Thy looks, when every cause of grief is past! 
Unworthy the glad tidings which I bring,
Listen while the Muse thus teaches thee to sing: 
  As parent earth, burst by imprison’d winds,
Scatters strange agues o’er men’s sickly minds,
And shakes the atheist’s knees; such ghastly fear
Late I beheld on every face appear;
Mild Dorothea,[1] peaceful, wise, and great,
Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate;
Mild Dorothea, whom we both have long
Not dared to injure with our lowly song;
Sprung from a better world, and chosen then
The best companion for the best of men: 
As some fair pile, yet spared by zeal and rage,
Lives pious witness of a better age;
So men may see what once was womankind,
In the fair shrine of Dorothea’s mind. 
  You that would grief describe, come here and trace
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda’s[2] face: 
Grief from Dorinda’s face does ne’er depart
Farther than its own palace in her heart: 
Ah, since our fears are fled, this insolent expel,
At least confine the tyrant to his cell. 
And if so black the cloud that Heaven’s bright queen
Shrouds her still beams; how should the stars be seen? 
Thus when Dorinda wept, joy every face forsook,
And grief flung sables on each menial look;
The humble tribe mourn’d for the quick’ning soul,
That furnish’d spirit and motion through the whole;
So would earth’s face turn pale, and life decay,
Should Heaven suspend to act but for a day;
So nature’s crazed convulsions make us dread
That time is sick, or the world’s mind is dead.—­
Take, youth, these thoughts, large matter to employ
The fancy furnish’d by returning joy;
And to mistaken man these truths rehearse,