XVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE.
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Thou dost not wisely, Bard.A double voice is Truth's, to use at will:One, with the abysmal scorn of good for ill,Smiting the brutish ear with doctrine hard,Wherein She strives to look as near a lieAs can comport with her divinity;The other tender-soft as seemThe embraces of a dead Love in a dream.These thoughts, which you have sungIn the vernacular,Should be, as others of the Church's are,Decently cloak'd in the Imperial Tongue.Have you no fearsLest, as Lord Jesus bids your sort to dread,Yon acorn-munchers rend you limb from limb,You, with Heaven's liberty affronting theirs!'So spoke my monitor; but I to him,'Alas, and is not mine a language dead?'
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