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Touched they without a prayer the Naiad's spring;
Yet was their influence transient; such brief awe
Inspiring as the thunder's long loud peal
Strikes to the feeble spirit. Household Gods,
Not such your empire! in your votaries' breasts
No momentary impulse ye awake;
Nor fleeting, like their local energies,
The deep devotion that your fanes impart.
O ye whom Youth has wilder'd on your way,
Or Vice with fair-mask'd foulness, or the lure
Of Fame that calls ye to her crowded paths
With Folly's rattle, to your Household Gods,
Return! for not in Vice's gay abodes,
Not in the unquiet unsafe halls of Fame
Does Happiness abide! O ye who weep
Much for the many miseries of Mankind,
More for their vices; ye whose honest eyes
Frown on Oppression,—ye whose honest hearts
Beat high when Freedom sounds her dread alarm;—
O ye who quit the path of peaceful life
Yet was their influence transient; such brief awe
Inspiring as the thunder's long loud peal
Strikes to the feeble spirit. Household Gods,
Not such your empire! in your votaries' breasts
No momentary impulse ye awake;
Nor fleeting, like their local energies,
The deep devotion that your fanes impart.
O ye whom Youth has wilder'd on your way,
Or Vice with fair-mask'd foulness, or the lure
Of Fame that calls ye to her crowded paths
With Folly's rattle, to your Household Gods,
Return! for not in Vice's gay abodes,
Not in the unquiet unsafe halls of Fame
Does Happiness abide! O ye who weep
Much for the many miseries of Mankind,
More for their vices; ye whose honest eyes
Frown on Oppression,—ye whose honest hearts
Beat high when Freedom sounds her dread alarm;—
O ye who quit the path of peaceful life
