Then past a long drear night, with here and there A doubtful glimmering from a single star; Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse the gleam increase, Till dawns at last the effulgent morn of Greece, Here all his Muses meet, all arts combine To nerve his genius and his works refine; Morals and laws and arms, and every grace That e'er adorn'd or could exalt the race, Wrought into science and arranged in rules, Swell the proud splendor of her cluster'd schools, Build and sustain the state with loud acclaim, And work those deathless miracles of fame That stand unrivall'd still; for who shall dare Another field with Marathon compare? Who speaks of eloquence or sacred song, But calls on Greece to modulate his tongue? And where has man's fine form so perfect shone In tint or mould, in canvass or in stone?
Yet from that splendid height o'erturn'd once more, He dasht in dust the living lamp he bore. Dazzled with her own glare, decoy'd and sold For homebred faction and barbaric gold, Greece treads on Greece, subduing and subdued, New crimes inventing, all the old renew'd, Canton o'er canton climbs; till, crush'd and broke, All yield the sceptre and resume the yoke.
Where shall we trace him next, the migrant man, To try once more his meliorating plan? Shall not the Macedonian, where he strides O'er Asian worlds and Nile's neglected tides, Prepare new seats of glory, to repay The transient shadows with perpetual day? His heirs erect their empires, and expand The beams of Greece thro each benighted land; Seleucia spreads o'er ten broad realms her sway, And turns on eastern climes the western ray; Palmyra brightens earth's commercial zone, And sits an emblem of her god the sun; While fond returning to that favorite shore Where Ammon ruled and Hermes taught of yore, All arts concentrate, force and grace combine To rear and blend the useful with the fine, Restore the Egyptian glories, and retain, Where science dawn'd, her great resurgent reign.
From Egypt chased again, he seeks his home, More firmly fixt in sage considerate Rome. Here all the virtues long resplendent shone All that was Greek, barbarian and her own; She school'd him sound, and boasted to extend Thro time's long course and earth's remotest end His glorious reign of reason; soon to cease The clang of arms, and rule the world in peace. Great was the sense he gain'd, and well defined The various functions of his tutor'd mind; Could but his sober sense have proved his guide, And kind experience pruned the shoots of pride.