Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,
As shall the fire's proud element affright,
Th' old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,
Shall at thy voice start, and misguide the day.
The jocund orbs shall break their measured pace,
And stubborn poles change their allotted place.
Heaven's gilded troops shall flutter here and there,
Leaving their boasting songs tuned to a sphere.


Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an
allegorical being.

It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that
fancy and fiction lose their effect; the whole system of life, while
the theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from
all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the sacred
volume habitually considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of
a distinct species of mankind, that lived and acted with manners
uncommunicable; so that it is difficult even for imagination to
place us in the state of them whose story is related, and by
consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted, nor can
the attention be often interested in anything that befalls them.

To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of
poetical embellishments, the writer brought little that could
reconcile impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more
disgusting than a narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are
all that the "Davideis" supplies.