What dear delight to Britons farce affords! Ever the taste of Mobs, but now of Lords: (Taste! that eternal wanderer, which flies From heads to ears, and now from ears to eves)

The play stands still; damn action and discourse!

Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse;

Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn, Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;

The Champion too! and, to complete the jest,

Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast. 319

ODE TO SIMPLICITY

[Publ. 1747]

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, 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,

In attic robe array'd,

ΤΟ

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.

Though taste, though genius, bless
To some divine excess,

Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole;

What each, what all supply,

May court, may charm, our eye;

ODE TO LIBERTY

[Publ. 1747]

STROPHE

WHO shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtueshedding, Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcæus, fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest,

At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing,

9

(What place so fit to seal a deed renown'd?) Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing,

It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound!

O goddess, in that feeling hour, When most its sounds would court thy ears,

Let not my shell's misguided power E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears. No, Freedom, no, I will not tell How Rome, before thy weeping face, With heaviest sound, a giant-statue, fell, Push'd by a wild and artless race From off its wide ambitious base, When Time his northern sons of spoil awoke, And all the blended work of strength

and grace,

20

With many a rude repeated stroke, And many a barbarous yell, to thousand fragments broke.

EPODE

30

Yet, even waere'er the least appear'd,
The admiring world thy hand revered;
Still 'midst the scatter'd states around,
Some remnants of her strength were found;
They saw, by what escaped the storm,
How wondrous rose her perfect form;
How in the great, the labour'd whole,
Each mighty master pour'd his soul!
For sunny Florence, seat of art,
Beneath her vines preserved a part,
Till they, whom Science loved to name,

(O who could fear it ?) quench'd her flame. And lo, an humbler relic laid

In jealous Pisa's olive shade!
See small Marino 2 joins the theme
Though least, not last in thy esteem:

40

4

Ah no! more pleased thy haunts I seek, 50
On wild Helvetia's mountains bleak:
(Where, when the favour'd of thy choice,
The daring archer heard thy voice;
Forth from his eyrie roused in dread,
The ravening eagle northward fled):
Or dwell in willow'd meads more near,
With those to whom thy stork is dear:
Those whom the rod of Alva bruised,
Whose crown a British queen refused!
The magic works, thou feel'st the strains,
One holier name alone remains;

The perfect spell shall then avail,
Hail, nymph, adored by Britain, hail!

ANTISTROPHE

59