ODE TO SIMPLICITY.

THOU by Nature taught,

To breathe her genuine thought,

In numbers warmly pure, and fweetly ftrong:

Who first on mountains wild,

In Fancy, loveliest child,

Thy babe, and Pleasure's, nurs'd the powers of fong!

Thou, who with hermit heart

Difdain'ft the wealth of art,

And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall:

But com'ft a decent maid,

In Attic robe array'd,

O chafte, unboaftful nymph, to thee I call!

By all the honney'd store

On Hybla's thymy shore,

By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear,

By her, whofe love-lorn woe,

In evening mufings flow,

Sooth'd sweetly fad Electra's poet's ear:

By old Cephifus deep,

Who fpread his wavy sweep

In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat,

On whofe enamel'd fide,

When holy Freedom died,

No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet.

O fifter meek of Truth,

To my admiring youth,

Thy fober aids and native charms infuse!
The flowers that sweetest breathe,

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

But staid to fing alone

To one distinguish'd throne,

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

No more, in hall or bower,
The paffions own thy power,

Love, only love her forceless numbers mean:

For thou haft left her shrine,

Nor olive more, nor vine,

Shall gain thy feet to blifs the fertile scene.

Tho' tafte, tho' genius blefs

To fome divine excess,

E

Faints the cold work till thou infpire the whole; What each, what all fupply,

May court, may charm our eye,

Thou, only thou can't raise the meeting foul!

Of these let others afk,

To aid fome mighty task,

I only feek to find thy temperate vale:
Where oft my reed might found

To maids and fhepherds round,

And all thy fons, O Nature! learn my tale.

ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.

S once, if not with light regard,

A read aright that gifted Bard,

(Him whose school above the rest
His loveliest Elfin queen has bleft)
One, only one, unrival'd fair *,
Might hope the magic girdle wear,
At folemn turney hung on high,
The wifh of each love-darting eye;

Lo! to each other nymph in turn applied,
As if, in air unseen, fome 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 fide;
Happier hopeless fair, if never

Her baffled hand with vain endeavour
Had touch'd that fatal zone to her denied!
Young Fancy thus, to me divineft name,

To whom, prepar'd and bath'd in heaven,
The ceft of amplest power is given,
To few the god-like gift affigns,

To gird their bleft prophetic loins,

And gaze her vifions wild, and feel unmix'd her flame.

* Florimel. See Spenser Leg. 4th.

The band, as fairy legends fay,

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 fome diviner mood,
Retiring, fat with her alone,

And plac'd her on his faphire throne,
The whiles, the vaulted fhrine around,
Seraphic wires were heard to found,
Now fublimeft triumph fwelling,
Now on love and mercy dwelling;
And fhe, from out the veiling cloud,
Breath'd her magic arts aloud:

And thou, thou rich-hair'd youth of morn,
And all thy fubject life was born!
The dangerous paffions kept aloof,
Far from the fainted growing woof:
But near it fate ectatic Wonder,
Listening the deep applauded thunder:
And Truth, in funny veft array'd,
By whose the Tarfel's eyes were made
All the shadowy tribes of Mind,
In braided dance their murmurs join'd,
And all the bright uncounted Pow'rs,
Who feed on heaven's ambrofial flowers.

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