WHilst you, ATHENIA, with assiduous toil
Reap the rich fruits of learning's fertile soil;
Now search whate'er historick truth has shewn,
And make the wealth of ages past your own;
Now crop the blossoms of poetick flow'rs,
And range delighted in the Muses bowers;
Say, will the sweetest of her sex attend
To lines by friendship, not by by flatt'ry penn'd;
To lines which tempt not worth with empty praise;
But to still greater height that worth would raise;
To lines which dare against a world decide,
And stem the rage of custom's rapid tide!