CLIII 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, 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 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
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!
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,
You loved her hills, and led her laureat band;
But stay’d to sing alone
To one distinguish’d throne;
And turn’d thy face, and fled her alter’d 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,
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.
W. Collins