I. <br />Queen of my songs, harmonious maid, <br />Ah why hast thou withdrawn thy aid? <br />Ah why forsaken thus my breast <br />With inauspicious damps oppress'd? <br />Where is the dread prophetic heat, <br />With which my bosom wont to beat? <br />Where all the bright mysterious dreams <br />Of haunted groves and tuneful streams, <br />That woo'd my genius to divinest themes? <br /> <br />II. <br />Say, goddess, can the festal board, <br />Or young Olympia's form ador'd; <br />Say, can the pomp of promis'd fame <br />Relume thy faint, thy dying flame? <br />Or have melodious airs the power <br />To give one free, poetic hour? <br />Or, from amid the Elysian train, <br />The soul of Milton shall i gain, <br />To win thee back with some celestial strain? <br /> <br />III. <br />O powerful strain! o sacred soul! <br />His numbers every sense controul: <br />And now again my bosom burns; <br />The Muse, the Muse herself returns. <br />Such on the banks of Tyne, confess'd, <br />I hail'd the fair immortal guest, <br />When first she seal'd me for her own, <br />Made all her blissful treasures known, <br />And bade me swear to follow Her alone.<br /><br />Mark Akenside<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-x-to-the-muse/
