452 MIBCELLANEOOS TfIOtrGIYT3. Damon. Prodigious fools, To think the hum and buz of paltry schools, And aukward tones of boys, are prizes meet For Roman harmony and Grecian wit! Rise from thy long repose, old Homer's ghost ! Horace arise ! Are these the palms you boast For your victorious verse? Great poets, tell, Can echoes of a name reward you well, For labours so sublime? Or have you found Praise make your slumbers sweeter in the ground ? Thalia. 1ies, their sweet slumbers, guarded by my wing, Are lull'd and soften'd by th' eternal spring Of bubbling praises from th' Aonian hill, Whose branchingstreams divide a silver rill To every kindred urn r And thine shall share These purling blessings under hallow'd air: The poets, dreams in death are still the muses care. Damon. Once, thou fair tempter of my heedless youth, Once and by chance thy tropes have hit the truth ; Praise is but empty air, a purling stream, Poets are paid with bubbles in a dream. Hass thou no songs to entertain thy dead? No phantom-lights to glimmer round my shade ? Thalia. Believe me, mortal, where thy relics sleep, My nightingales shall tuneful vigils keep, And cheer thy silent tomb: The glow -worm shine With evening lamp, to mark which earth is thine: While midnight fairies, tripping round thy bed, Collect a moon -beam glory for thy head. Fair hyacinths thy hillock shall adorn, And living ivy creep about thy urn : Sweet violets scent the ground, while laurels throw Their leafy shade o'er the green turf below, And borrow life from thee to crown some poet's brow., Damon. Muse, thy lest blessings sink below the first ; Ah wretched trifler ! To array my dust In thygreeu Now'ry forms, and think the payment just! Poor is my gain should nations join to praise ; And now must chirping birds reward my lays? What! shall the travels of my soul he paid With glow-worm light, and with a leafy shade, Violets and creeping ivies? Is this all The muse can promise, or the poet call His glorious hope and joy ? Are these thehonours of thy favourite sons, To have their flesh, their limbs, their mould'ring beget Fatten the glebe to make a laurel grow,
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