mournful tale. 
    The woes of Thetis, and Ulysses’ toils,
    His mighty mind recover’d from the spoils
    Of envious time, and placed in lasting light
    The trophies ransom’d from oblivion’s night
    The Mantuan bard, responsive to his song,
    Co-rival of his glory, walk’d along. 
    The next with new surprise my notice drew,
    Where’er he pass’d spontaneous flowerets grew,
    Fit emblems of his style; and close behind
    The great Athenian at his lot repined;
    Which doom’d him, like a secondary star,
    To yield precedence in the wordy war;
    Though like the bolts of Jove that shake the spheres,
    He lighten’d in their eyes, and thunder’d in their ears. 
    The assembly felt the shock, the immortal sound,
    His Attic rival’s fainter accents drown’d. 
    But now so many candidates for fame
    In countless crowds and gay confusion came,
    That Memory seem’d her province to resign,
    Perplex’d and lost amid the lengthen’d line. 
    Yet Solon there I spied, for laws renown’d,
    Salubrious plants in clean and cultured ground;
    But noxious, if malignant hands infuse
    In their transmuted stems a baneful juice
    Amongst the Romans, Varro next I spied,
    The light of linguists, and our country’s pride;
    Still nearer as he moved, the eye could trace
    A new attraction and a nameless grace. 
    Livy I saw, with dark invidious frown
    Listening with pain to Sallust’s loud renown;
    And Pliny there, profuse of life I found,
    Whom love of knowledge to the burning bound
    Led unawares; and there Plotinus’ shade,
    Who dark Platonic truths in fuller light display’d: 
    He, flying far to ’scape the coming pest,
    Was, when he seem’d secure, by death oppressed;
    That, fix’d by fate, before he saw the sun,
    The careful sophist strove in vain to shun. 
    Hortensius, Crassus, Galba, next appear’d,
    Calvus and Antony, by Rome revered,
    The first with Pollio join’d, whose tongue profane
    Assail’d the fame of Cicero in vain. 
    Thucydides, who mark’d distinct and clear
    The tardy round of many a bloody year,
    And, with a master’s graphic skill, pourtray’d
    The fields, “whose summer dust with blood was laid;”
    And near Herodotus his ninefold roll display’d,
    Father of history; and Euclid’s vest
    The heaven-taught symbols of that art express’d
    That measures matter, form, and empty space,
    And calculates the planets’ heavenly race;
    And Porphyry, whose proud obdurate heart
    Was proof to mighty Truth’s celestial dart;
    With sophistry assail’d the cause of God,
    And stood in arms against the heavenly code. 
    Hippocrates, for healing arts renown’d,
    And half obscured within the dark profound;
    The pair, whom ignorance in