Acasto

This might we do if warm'd by that bright coal Snatch'd from the altar of seraphic fire, Which touch'd Isaiah's lips, or if the spirit Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old, Should fire the breast; but yet I call the muse And what we can will do. I see, I see A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities and men Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore; Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town Of note: and where the Mississippi stream By forests shaded now runs weeping on, Nations shall grow and states not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings That in the womb of time yet dormant lye Waiting the joyful hour for life and light. O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, Our sons shall hear of us as things remote, That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas! How could I weep that we were born so soon, In the beginning of more happy times! But yet perhaps our fame shall last unhurt. The sons of science nobly scorn to die; Immortal virtue this denies, the muse Forbids the men to slumber in the grave Who well deserve the praise that virtue gives.