Excerpt from Civitas: The Romance of Our Nation's Life

Civitas.

Introduction.

The poets, who, in superstitious times,
Gave fancy wing, and told their dreams in rhymes,
Might ask assistance from those cultured sprites
Who 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 assist
And 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,

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