ancient days
    Adorn’d like deities, with borrow’d rays. 
    Galen was near, of Pergamus the boast,
    Whose skill retrieved the art so nearly lost. 
    Then Anaxarchus came, who conquer’d pain;
    And he, whom pleasures strove to lure in vain
    From duty’s path.  And first in mournful mood
    The mighty soul of Archimedes stood;
    And sage Democritus I there beheld,
    Whose daring hand the light of vision quell’d,
    To shun the soul-seducing forms, that play
    On the rapt fancy in the beam of day: 
    The gifts of fortune, too, he flung aside,
    By wisdom’s wealth, a nobler store, supplied. 
    There Hippias, too, I saw, who dared to claim
    For general science an unequall’d name. 
    And him, whose doubtful mind and roving eye
    No certainty in truth itself could spy;
    With him who in a deep mysterious guise
    Her heavenly charms conceal’d from vulgar eyes. 
    The frontless cynic next in rank I saw,
    Sworn foe to decency and nature’s modest law. 
    With him the sage, that mark’d, with dark disdain,
    His wealth consumed by rapine’s lawless train;
    And glad that nothing now remain’d behind,
    To foster envy in a rival’s mind,
    That treasure bought, which nothing can destroy,
    “The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy.” 
    Then curious Dicaearchus met my view,
    Who studied nature with sagacious view. 
    Quintilian next, and Seneca were seen,
    And Chaeronea’s sage, of placid mien;
    All various in their taste and studious toils,
    But each adorn’d with Learning’s splendid spoils. 
    There, too, I saw, in universal jar,
    The tribes that spend their time in wordy war;
    And o’er the vast interminable deep
    Of knowledge, like conflicting tempests, sweep. 
    For truth they never toil, but feed their pride
    With fuel by eternal strife supplied: 
    No dragon of the wild with equal rage,
    Nor lions in nocturnal war, engage
    With hate so deadly, as the learn’d and wise,
    Who scan their own desert with partial eyes. 
    Carneades, renown’d for logic skill,
    Who right or wrong, and true and false, at will
    Could turn and change, employ’d his fruitless pain
    To reconcile the fierce, contending train: 
    But, ever as he toil’d, the raging pest
    Of pride, as knowledge grew, with equal speed increased. 
    Then Epicurus, of sinister fame,
    Rebellious to the lord of nature, came;
    Who studied to deprive the soaring soul
    Of her bright world of hope beyond the pole;
    A mole-ey’d race their hapless guide pursued,
    And blindly still the vain assault renew’d. 
    Dark Metrodorus next sustain’d the cause,
    With Aristippus, true to Pleasure’s laws. 
    Chrysippus next his subtle web disposed: 
    Zeno alternate spread his