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Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

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As the gay motes that people the sun-beams;

Or likest hovering dreams

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

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But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy,

Hail divinest Melancholy,

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem

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Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,

Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove

To set her beauties' praise above

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The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended;

Yet thou art higher far descended;

Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore

To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she (in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain):
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of Cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait,

And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast

Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

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19. Ethiop queen; Cassiope, who was so beautiful that the Nereids determined on her destruction. She was carried, it is said, to the skies, and made a star of: hence the epithet.

Come,pensive Nun, devo Sober, steadfast, and All in a robe of dau Flowing with majes

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Come,pensive Nim, devont and pure.
Sober, steadfast, and demure.
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train.

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