Page:The Poetical Works of William Collins (1830).djvu/112

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28

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, 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 comest 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[1] whose lovelorn woe,
In evening musings slow,
Soothed sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear:

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