Excerpt from Civitas: The Romance of Our Nation's LifeCivitas.Introduction.The poets, who, in superstitious times, Gave fancy wing, and told their dreams in rhymes, Might ask assistance from those cultured spritesWho occupied, of yore, Olympus heights, To Sinai or Parnassus might they go, As well as other places, high and low, A goddess, muse or something else invoke, From God's own spirit down to Bolingbroke, For in their songs the gods held warm debates, Extolled their loves and justified their hates, Or devils plotted for the fall of man, Or fancy sought to solve creation's plan.In songs like these some goddess might assistAnd give the verse, as, 'twere, a heav'nly twist, Might tell how Juno curtain-lectured Zeus, And how he thundered when her tongue was loose, About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.