By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, In evening musings slow, Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear: By old Cephisus deep,† 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 his 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 hearing 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 όσις των οικίρως Οιχομενων γονεων επιλαθεται 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. + Cephisus is the 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! 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: For thou hast left her shrine, 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; 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: To maids and shepherds round, And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale. 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, To gird their blest prophetic loins, And gaze her visions wild, and feel unmix'd her flame. 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, And pour'd the main engirting all. 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 worm.-C. *The tarsol is the gyr-hawk: tarsol, or tiercelet, being an old term in falconry.-B. |