Page:Poems - Southey (1799) volume 1.djvu/212

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Touched they without a prayer the Naiad's spring;Yet was their influence transient; such brief aweInspiring as the thunder's long loud pealStrikes to the feeble spirit. Household Gods,Not such your empire! in your votaries' breastsNo momentary impulse ye awake;Nor fleeting, like their local energies,The deep devotion that your fanes impart.O ye whom Youth has wilder'd on your way,Or Vice with fair-mask'd foulness, or the lureOf Fame that calls ye to her crowded pathsWith Folly's rattle, to your Household Gods,Return! for not in Vice's gay abodes,Not in the unquiet unsafe halls of FameDoes Happiness abide! O ye who weepMuch for the many miseries of Mankind,More for their vices; ye whose honest eyesFrown on Oppression,—ye whose honest heartsBeat high when Freedom sounds her dread alarm;—O ye who quit the path of peaceful life
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