O thou whose spirit most possest
The sacred seat of Shakspeare's breast !
By all that from tly prophet broke,
In thy divine emotions spoke!
Hither again thy fury deal,
Teach me but once like him to feel :
His
cypress
wreath

my meed decree, And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee !*

The bird of dawning singeth all night long :.
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm;
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.-Hamlet, A. 1, S. L.

which have been thus translated ;

Et quotiês redeunt natalia tempora Christi
Nocturnas gallum usque ferunt cantare per horas :
Tum quoque & innocuas stellas tenebrasque salubres
Esse ferunt; illo nam tempore dira vetantur
Spectra suis exire locis, lemuresque latescunt,
Et sagis lædendi est interdicta potestas ;
Tanta est sacratæ reverentia credita nocti.-C.

* It is difficult to keep entirely separate the active and passive qualitie of allegorical personages: difficult to say whether such a thing as Fears should be the agent in inspiring, or the victim agitated by the passion. In this ode the latter idea prevails; for Fear appears in the character of a nymph pursued, like D.iyden's Honoria, by the ravening brood of Fate. She is distracted by the ghastly train conjured up by Danger, and hunted through the world without being suffered to take repose: yet this idea is somewhat departed from, when the poet endeavours to propitiate Fear, by offering her, as a suitable abode, the cell where Rape and Murder dwell;

1

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,

or a cave whence she may hear the cries of drowning seamen. She then becomes the Power who delights in inflicting fear. But perhaps the reader is an enemy to his own gratitication, who investigates the attributes of these shadowy beings, with too nice and curious an eye.-B.

* Hybla is a mountain in Sicily; but this allegorical imagery of the honey store, the blooms, and murmurs of Hybla, alludes to the sweetness and beauty of the Attic poetry.-L..

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 deept

Who sproad his wavy sweep
In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat,

On whose enamel'd side,

When holy Freedom died,
No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet.

• Milton, in bis 8th sonnet, says

“ The repeated air of sad Electra's poet, had the power

To save th’ Athenian walls from ruin bare." This refers to a story in Plutarch: that when Lysander had taken Athens, and intended to destroy that city, he was diverted from his purpose by bearing some lines sung from the Electra of Euripides. But Collins alludes to the Electra of Sophocles, and to the following passage in that drama.

Νηπιος δεις των οικίρως
Οιχομενων γονεων επιλαθεται»
Εμε γα τονοεσσ' αραρε Φρενας
'Α Ιτυν, αιεν Ιτυν γ ολοφυρείαι
Ορνις αθυζομενη, Διος αγΓελος. V. 145.
Base is the wretch, and senseless, who forgets
The loss of parents barbarously slain;
But her I love, who still repeating calls
Iteus, dear Iteus, in her ceaseless grief,

The melancholy bird, Jove's messenger.-C. of Cephisus is tlre name of a river in Beotia, and of another which runs near Athens. Vid. Cellar. Geo. L 2, C 13.-C.

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 victue's patriot theme,
You lov'd her hills, and led her laureate band:

But staid to sing alo

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 bles

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 ;

What each, what all supply,

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:

Where oft my reed might sound

To maids and shepherds round,
And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale.

ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.

As once, if not with light regard,
I read aright that gifted Bard,
(Him whose school above the rest
His loveliest Elfin queen has blest)
One, only one, unrival'd Fair",
Might hope the magic girdle wear,
At solemn turney hung on high,
The wish of each love-darting eye ;

Lo! to each other nymph in turn applied,

As if, in air unseen, some hovering hand,

* Florimel, See Spenser. Leg. 4th.