Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Collins. 17211759457. 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, | 5 |
Thy babe and Pleasure’s, nursed the pow’rs 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, | 10 |
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, | 15 |
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 | 20 |
In warbled wand’rings 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, | 25 |
To my admiring youth | |
Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! | |
The flow’rs that sweetest breathe, | |
Though beauty cull’d the wreath, | |
Still ask thy hand to range their order’d hues. | 30 |
While Rome could none esteem, | |
But virtue’s patriot theme, | |
You loved her hills, and led her laureate band; | |
But stay’d to sing alone | |
To one distinguish’d throne, | 35 |
And turn’d thy face, and fled her alter’d land. | |
No more, in hall or bow’r, | |
The passions own thy pow’r. | |
Love, only Love her forceless numbers mean; | |
For thou hast left her shrine, | 40 |
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; | 45 |
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, | 50 |
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. |