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, and 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,

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 laureate 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 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.

Tho' taste, tho' 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 can'st raise the meeting soul!