This gentle ev'ning let the sun descend
Untroubled, while it paints your ambient hills
With faded lustre, and a sweet farewel.
Here is our seat: that castle opposite,
Proud of its woody brow, adorns the scene,
Dictate, O vers'd in books, and just of taste,
Dictate the pleasing theme of our discourse.
Shall we trace Science from her Eastern home
Chaldaean; or the banks of Nile, where Thebes,
Nursing her daughter arts, majestic stood,
And pour'd forth knowledge from an hundred gates?
There first the marble learn'd to mimic life,
The pillar'd temple rose, and pyramids,
Whose undecaying grandeur laughs at Time;
Birth-place of letters, where the sun was shewn
His radiant way, and heav'ns were taught to roll.
There too the Muses tun'd their earliest lyre,
Warbling soft numbers to Serapis' ear;
'Till chac'd by tyrants, or a milder clime
Inviting, they remov'd with pilgrim harps,
And all their band of harmony to Greece.
As when a flock of linnets, if perchance
Deliver'd from the falcon's talon, fly
With trembling wing to cover, and renew
Their notes; tell ev'ry bush of their escape,
And thrill their merry thanks to Liberty.
The tuneful tribe, pleas'd with their new abode,
Polish'd the rude inhabitants, whence tales
Of list'ning woods, and rocks that danc'd to sound.
Hear the full chorus lifting hymns to Jove!
Linus and Orpheus catch the strain, and all
The raptur'd audience utter loud applause.