O sister meek of Truth, To my admiring youth, Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! 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: 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: Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. Tho' taste, tho' genius bless To some divine excess, * The Poet cuts off the prevalence of simplicity among the Romans with the age of Augustus; and indeed it did not continue much longer; most of the compositions after that date giving into false and artificial ornaments. "No more in hall or bower," &c. In these lines, the writings of the Provencal poets are principally alluded to. in which simplicity is generally sacrificed to rhapsodies of romantic love.-L. Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole; May court, may charm our eye, Thou, only thou can'st raise the meeting soul! Of these let others ask, To aid some mighty task, I only seek to find thy temperate vale: To maids and shepherds round, ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. As once, if not with light regard, I read aright that gifted Bard, Lo! to each other nymph in turn applied, *Florimel, See Spenser. Leg. 4th. Some chaste and angel-friend to virgin-fame, Her baffled hand with vain endeavour Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name, And To whom, prepar'd and bath'd in heaven, To few the god-like gift assigns, gaze her visions wild, and feel unmix'd her flame. The band, as fairy legends say, Was wove on that creating day, When He, who called with thought to birth Yon tented sky, this laughing earth, And drest with springs, and forests tall, It is difficult to reduce to any thing like a meaning, this strange, and by no means reverential, fiction concerning the Divine Being. Probably the obscure idea that floated in the mind of the author was this: that true poetry being a representation of nature, must have its archetype in those ideas of the supreme mind which originally gave birth to nature; and therefore, that no one should attempt it without being conversant with the fair and beautiful, the true and perfect, both in moral ideas, the shadowy tribes of mind, and the productions of the natural world.—B. No one who is acquainted with Collins's writings will suspect him, here or elsewhere, of the least intentional irreverence. But to say of the Deity, that he is at any time, or upon any occasion, in a diviner mood, is an Retiring, sate with her alone, And plac'd her on his sapphire throne, And Thou, thou rich-hair'd youth of morn, unguarded expression, and neither reverend nor true. The works of his creation may be more or less divine; but He himself is the same in all his perfections, whether creating the soul of a man, or the body of a wom.-C. * The tarsol is the gyr-hawk: tarsol, or tiercelet, being an old term in falconry.-B. High on some cliff, to heaven up-pil'd, Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock, I view that oak, the fancied glades among, From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew, Nigh spher'd in heaven its native strains could hear; From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue, Of all the sons of soul was known, And Heaven, and Fancy, kindred powers, ODE.-WRITTEN IN THE YEAR MDCCXLVI. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, * See, in the Author's Life, the account of a remarkable dream which he had while at school: to that school-dream we undoubtedly owe this ode, and this turn of it.* |