Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/98
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CLYDE;
This charms with beauty regular and chaste,And elegance correct of Grecian taste.The comely parts exact proportion show,And to one whole by fit connections grow.Corinthian columns the fair walls adorn;Light seems the lofty frame, and easy borne.That labours with the vast and cumbrous loadOf various ornaments, profuse bestowed:Huge pillars heave to a stupendous height,Their Gothic grandeur's vast unwieldy weight: 120The pile the rich unpolished genius showsOf that wild daring age in which it rose. Round these fair courts, where stately structures rise,And that ascending spire salutes the skies;Fair truth displays, in all her native light,Resistless charms, celestially bright!And gently leads the willing mind along,As charmed with sweetness of angelic song:The atheist learns his Maker to adore;Ashamed, the wicked wish to sin no more. 130 Here dwell the muses: In their sacred halls,Soft as descending dew their doctrine falls.Rome's ancient heroes, marshalled for the fight,Tremendous rise in pure historic light;