There, plung'd amid the shadows brown,
Imagination lays him down;
Attentive, in his airy mood,
To every murmur of the wood:
The bee in yonder flowery nook;
The chidings of the headlong brook;
The green leaf shivering in the gale;
The warbling hill, the lowing vale;
The distant woodman's echoing stroke;
The thunder of the falling oak.
From thought to thought in vision led,
He holds high converse with the dead;
Sages, or Poets. See they rise!
And shadowy skim before his eyes.
Hark! ORPHEUS strikes the lyre again,
That soften'd savages to men:
Lo! SOCRATES, the sent of heaven,
To whom it's moral will was given.
Fathers and friends of human kind,
They form'd the nations or refin'd,
With all that mends the head and heart,
Enlightening truth, adorning art.