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Daughter of
Jove, relentless Power,
Thou tamer of the human
breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The
Bad affright, afflict the Best!
Bound in thy
adamantine chain
The Proud are taught to taste of
pain,
And purple Tyrants vainly groan
With pangs
unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
When first thy
Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child,
designed,
To thee he gave the heav'nly Birth,
And
bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged Nurse! thy
rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
And from her
own she learned to melt at others' woe.
Scared at
thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly's idle
brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse,
and with them go
The summer Friend, the flatt'ring
Foe;
By vain Prosperity received,
To her they vow
their truth, and are again believed.
Wisdom in
sable garb arrayed
Immersed in rapt'rous thought
profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid
With leaden
eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps
attend:
Warm Charity, the gen'ral Friend,
With
Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity dropping soft
the sadly-pleasing tear.
Oh, gently on thy
Suppliant's head,
Dread Goddess, lay thy chast'ning
hand!
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
Not circled
with the vengeful Band
(As by the Impious thou art
seen),
With thund'ring voice, and threat'ning mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and
fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.
Thy form
benign, O Goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic Train be there
To soften, not to
wound my heart.
The gen'rous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects
to scan,
What others are, to feel, and know myself a
Man.
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