ODE TO SIMPLICITY.

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, or Pleasure's, nurs'd 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 array'd,

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,

Sooth'd 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 allur'd thy future feet.

O sister meek of Truth,

To my admiring youth,

Thy sober aid and native charms infuse!
The flowers that sweetest breathe,

Though Beauty cull'd the wreath,

Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues.

While Rome could none esteem

But virtue's patriot theme,

The andwv, or nightingale, for which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness.

You lov'd her hills, and led her laureat band:

But staid to sing alone

To one distinguish'd throne;

And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land.

No more, in hall or bow'r,

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,

Faints 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 meeting soul!

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.

ODE

ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.

As once,-if, not with light regard,
I read aright that gifted bard,

-Him whose school above the rest
His loveliest elfin queen has blest ;-
One, only one, unrival'd' fair,
Might hope the magic girdle wear,
At solemn turney hung on high,
The wish of each love-darting eye;

-Lo! to each other nymph, in turn, applied,
As if, in air unseen, some hovering hand,
Some chaste and angel-friend to virgin-fame,
With whisper'd spell had burst the starting band,
It left unblest her loath'd dishonour'd side;
Happier hopeless Fair, if never

Her baffled hand with vain endeavour,
Had touch'd that fatal zone to her denied!

Florimel. See Spenser Leg. 4th.

Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name,
To whom, prepar'd and bath'd in heaven,
The cest of amplest power is given:
To few the godlike gift assigns,

To gird their best prophetic loins,

And gaze her visions wild, and feel unmix'd her flame!

The band, as fairy legends say,

Was wove on that creating day

When He, who call'd with thought to birth

Yon tented sky, this laughing earth,

And drest with springs and forests tall,

And pour'd the main engirting all,
Long by the lov'd enthusiast woo'd,
Himself in some diviner mood,
Retiring, sat with her alone,

And plac'd her on his sapphire throne;
The whiles, the vaulted shrine around,
Seraphic wires were heard to sound,
Now sublimest triumph swelling,
Now on love and mercy dwelling;
And she, from out the veiling cloud,
Breath'd her magic notes aloud: