XXVIII. ODE TO SIMPLICITY. -COLLINS. O THOU, by nature taught, To breathe her genuine thought, In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong: Who first on mountains wild, In fancy, loveliest child, Thy babe, and Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song! Thou, who with hermit heart Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall: But com'st a decent maid, In attic robe arrayed, O chaste, unboastful nymph, to thee I call! By all the honey'd store On Hybla's thymy shore, By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, By her, whose love-lorn woe, In evening musings slow, Soothed sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear: By old Cephisus deep, Who spread his wavy sweep In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat, On whose enamell'd side, When holy freedom died, No equal haunt allured thy future feet: O sister meek of truth, To my admiring youth, Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! Still ask thy hand to range their ordered hues. While Rome could none esteem, But virtue's patriot theme, You loved her hills, and led her laureate band; But staid to sing alone To one distinguished throne, And turned thy face, and fled her altered land. No more, in hall or bower, The passions own thy power, Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean : For thou hast left her shrine, Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. Though taste, though genius bless To some divine excess, Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply, May court, may charm our eye, Thou, only thou, canst raise the melting soul! 10 Of these let others ask, To aid some mighty task, I only seek to find thy temperate vale : Where oft my reed might sound To maids and shepherds round, And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale. XXIX. ODE TO EVENING. COLLINS. If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs, and dying gales; O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired Sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed: Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat, With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, |