Was ever work to such perfection wrought?
How elegant the diction! pure the thought!
Not sparingly adorn’d with scatter’d rays,
But one bright beauty, one collected blaze;
So breaks the day upon the shades of night,
Enlivening all with one unbounded light.
To humble man’s proud heart thy great design;
But who can read this wondrous work divine,
So justly plann’d, and so politely writ,
And not be proud, and boast of human wit?
Yet just to thee, and to thy precepts true,
Let us know man, and give to God his due;
His image we, but mix’d with coarse allay,
Our happiness to love, adore, obey;
To praise him for each gracious boon bestow’d,
For this thy work, for every lesser good,
With prostrate hearts before his throne to fall,
And own the great Creator all in all!
The Muse, which should instruct, now entertains
On trifling subjects, in enervate strains;
Be it thy task to set the wanderer right,
Point out her way in her airial flight;
Her noble mien, her honours lost, restore,
And bid her deeply think, and proudly soar.
Thy theine sublime, and easy verse, will prove
Her high descent, and mission from above.
Let others now translate; thy abler pen
Shall vindicate the ways of God to men;
In virtue’s cause shall gloriously prevail,
When the bench frowns in vain, and pulpits fail.
Made wise by thee, whose happy style conveys
The purest morals in the softest lays:
As angels once, so now we mortals bold
Shall climb the ladder Jacob view’d of old;
Thy kind reforming Muse shall lead the way
To the bright regions of eternal day.
—————
The End
And that’s the End of the Poem
© Poetry Monster, 2021.
Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry.
Poetry Monster — the multilingual library of poetic works. Here you’ll find original poems, poetry translations, ancient verses, ballads and even folk tales.
Poetry Monster (or even The Poetry Monster) — is also an international multilingual community of poets and poetry connoisseurs. Join us:
Some external links: The Bat’s Poetry Cave. — Fledermaus’s poetry site. Talking Writing Monster. — the irreverent and irrelevant chatter on subjects both serious and not quite. A free for all board. You can scribble anything on it without registration (but it doesn’t let spammers in). You can even post your poems. Qwant.com. — a search engine from France. It’s an alternative because there are a few alternatives, like Bing, Duckduckgo, and Ecosia. And there is Yandex, the ultimate language-oriented search engine for the Russophone world. Commercial Links: Russian Commerce – the foreign trade assistance agency Other links: Poems and poetry in Russian (if you are reading this in English, as you obviously are, then you’d have to switch the language, the language switch is on the menu. More on languages)
