Chapter 7 No.7

Born to the spacious empire of the Nine,

One would have thought she should have been content

To manage well that mighty government;

But what can young ambitious souls confine?

To the next realm she stretch'd her sway,

For Painture near adjoining lay,

A plenteous province, and alluring prey.

A Chamber of Dependencies was framed,

(As conquerors will never want pretence,

When arm'd, to justify the offence)

And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claim'd.

The country open lay without defence:

For poets frequent inroads there had made,

And perfectly could represent

The shape, the face, with every lineament,

And all the large domains which the Dumb Sister sway'd;

All bow'd beneath her government,

Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went.

Her pencil drew whate'er her soul design'd,

And oft the happy draft surpass'd the image in her mind.

The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,

And fruitful plains and barren rocks,

Of shallow brooks that flow'd so clear,

The bottom did the top appear:

Of deeper, too, and ampler floods,

Which, as in mirrors, show'd the woods;

Of lofty trees, with sacred shades,

And pérspectives of pleasant glades,

Where nymphs of brightest form appear,

And shaggy satyrs standing near,

Which them at once admire and fear.

The ruins, too, of some majestic piece,

Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece,

Whose statues, friezes, columns broken lie,

And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;

What nature, art, bold fiction e'er durst frame,

Her forming hand gave feature to the name.

So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before,

But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore.