free-verse26 lines
The Persian, The Sun, And The Cloud.
by John GayLives there a bard for genius famed
Whom Envy's tongue hath not declaimed?
Her hissing snakes proclaim her spite;
She summons up the fiends of night;
Hatred and malice by her stand,
And prompt to do what she command.
As prostrate to the orb of day
A Persian, invocating, lay:
"Parent of light, whose rays dispense
The various gifts of Providence,
Accept our praise, accept our prayer,
Smile on our fields, and bless our year."
A cloud passed by - a voice aloud,
Like Envy's, issued from that cloud:
"I can eclipse your gaudy orb,
And every ray you ask absorb.
Pray, then, to me - where praise is due -
And I will grant the rays to you."
The Persian answered in his wrath:
"He raised thee to that airy path;
A passing wind or puff of air
Will hurl thee to thy proper sphere."
The gale arose, the cloud was doomed,
The golden orb his reign resumed.
And as the sun above, so worth
Scatters the clouds of sons of earth.