Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ADVENTUROUS MUSE, by ISAAC WATTS



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ADVENTUROUS MUSE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Urania takes her morning flight
Last Line: O'erspread the list'ning choir.
Subject(s): Adventure And Adventurers; Muses


URANIA takes her morning flight
With an inimitable wing:
Through rising deluges of dawning light
She cleaves her wondrous way,
She tunes immortal anthems to the growing day;
Nor Rapin gives her rules to fly, nor Purcell notes to sing.
She nor inquires, nor knows nor fears,
Where lie the pointed rocks, or where th' ingulfing sand;
Climbing the liquid mountains of the skies
She meets descending angels as she flies,
Nor asks them where their country lies,
Or where the sea-marks stand.
Touched with an empyreal ray
She springs unerring upward to eternal day,
Spreads her white sails aloft, and steers
With bold and safe attempt to the celestial land.

Whilst little skiffs along the mortal shores
With humble toil in order creep,
Coasting in sight of one another's oars,
Nor venture through the boundless deep:
Such low pretending souls are they
Who dwell inclosed in solid orbs of skull,
Plodding along their sober way;
The snail o'ertakes them in their wildest play,
While the poor labourers sweat to be correctly dull.

Give me the chariot whose diviner wheels
Mark their own route, and unconfined
Bound o'er the everlasting hills,
And lose the clouds below, and leave the stars behind.
Give me the Muse whose generous force
Impatient of the reins
Pursues an unattempted course,
Breaks all the critic's iron chains,
And bears to paradise the raptured mind.

There Milton dwells: the mortal sung
Themes not presumed by mortal tongue;
New terrors and new glories shine
In every page, and flying scenes divine
Surprise the wond'ring sense, and draw our souls along.
Behold his Muse sent out t' explore
The unapparent deep where waves of Chaos roar,
And realms of night unknown before.
She traced a glorious path unknown,
Through fields of heav'nly war, and seraphs overthrown,
Where his advent'rous genius led:
Sovereign, she framed a model of her own,
Nor thanked the living nor the dead.
The noble hater of degenerate rhyme
Shook off the chains, and built his verse sublime,
A monument too high for coupled sounds to climb.
He mourned the garden lost below
(Earth is the scene for tuneful woe);
Now bliss beats high in all his veins,
Now the lost Eden he regains,
Keeps his own air, and triumphs in unrivalled strains.

Immortal bard! Thus thy own Raphael sings,
And knows no rule but native fire:
All heav'n sits silent while to his sovereign strings
He talks unutterable things;
With graces infinite his untaught fingers rove
Across the golden lyre:
From every note devotion springs,
Rapture and harmony and love
O'erspread the list'ning choir.





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