STANZA 1
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, nurs’d the pow’rs of song!
O Simplicity, you were tutored by Nature to give expression to her genuine thoughts in pure, warm, sweet, and emphatic verses. Nature herself reared and fed the powers of poetry which, in terms of the human imagination, is the loveliest child of your union with Pleasure.
STANZA 2
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!
O Simplicity, you have the austere heart of an ascetic. You strongly dislike the artificial devices which are used by poets to create the effect of plenty; and you dislike the embellishments, the display of rich garments, and the long robes which trail on the ground when the wearer of such robes walks. You, O Simplicity, are a sober and dignified maiden who dresses herself in the ancient Athenian garments which symbolized a plain style. You, O Simplicity, are a beautiful, graceful, pure, and unostentatious maiden, and you do not make a vain display of yourself. It is you whom I invoke.
STANZA 3
By all the honey’d store
On Hybla’s thymy shore;
By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear;
By her whose lovelorn woe
In ev’ning musings slow
Sooth’d sweetly sad Electra’s poet’s ear:
O Simplicity, 1 invoke you in the name of all that store of honey which the ancient Sicilian city of Hybla used to produce. I invoke you in the name of Hybla where the ever-green plant called thyme grew in plenty.
I invoke you in the name of all the buds and blossoms which grew there, and in the name of the dear murmuring sounds produced by the bees there.I invoke you in the name of the nightingale whose love-sick song of sorrow produced a consoling effect on the ears of Euripides*, the tragic dramatist who wrote the sad play entitled Electra. That dramatist used to be in a meditative and melancholy mood in the evenings when the sad but sweet song of the nightingale fell upon his ears and comforted him with its sweet strains.
STANZA 4
By old Cephisus deep,
Who spread his wavy sweep
In warbled wand’rings round thy green retreat;
On whose enamell’d side,
When holy Freedom died,
No equal haunt allur’d thy future feet.
I invoke you in the name of the ancient and deep river, Cephisus, which flowed past your green abode near Athens. The waters of that river covered a wide span lying between its banks. That river followed its unplanned course, producing sweet sounds. In those days you dwelt close to the bright and shining banks of that river. But when that land, namely Greece, lost its sacred freedom, you found no comparable abode to attract you or to prompt you to live there. (After Greece had been conquered by the Romans, you did not think it worth while to stay on in that country.
You could not think of any other hospitable land where you could live.
STANZA 5
O sister meek of Truth,
To my admiring youth,
Thy sober aid and native charms infuse!
The flow’rs that sweetest breathe,
Tho’ Beauty cull’d the wreath,
Still ask thy hand to range their order’d hues.
O Simplicity, you are the gentle and submissive sister of Truth. I am a young admirer of yours, and I appeal to you to impart to my poems your sober charm which you can claim as your special attribute. I need inspiration from you. I have myself gathered sweet-smelling flowers in order to make a garland of them, and I have done so under the impulse of my own love of beauty. Yet these flowers need your guidance in order to be arranged properly, according to their colours. (I have myself managed to assemble the themes and the imagery for writing poems; but I need your guidance in the choice of simple, plain, and expressive words).
STANZA 6
While Rome could none esteem
But virtue’s patriot theme,
You lov’d her hills, and led her laureate band;
But stay’d to sing alone
To one distinguish’d throne,
And turn’d thy face, and fled her alter’d land.
There was a time when Rome respected nothing but the virtuous theme of patriotism for its poetry. At that time you loved the Roman hills, and you acted as a guide for the whole class of Roman poets. But you stayed in Rome to sing in honour of only one eminent emperor, namely Augustus, and to express your allegiance to him. But you turned your face away, and fled from Rome as soon as the conditions there became hostile to you.
STANZA 7
No more, in hall or bow’r,
The passions own thy pow’r;
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.
The human passions now do not acknowledge your authority either in the halls of kings and princes or in the apartments and bedrooms of ladies.
Only one passion now has any meaning for the people, and even that passion has been reduced to a mere shadow of itself because it no longerhas ‘your patronage. The only remaining passion now is love, but even this passion has lost its true quality and finds expression only in feeble verses. You have forsaken the altar at which love was worshipped because love is no longer true. Now you would not go back to the temple of love because it offers a sight which is suggestive of slavishness. You cannot be lured back to that place either by the offer of an olive branch which promises peace, or by the offer of wine which promises intoxication.
STANZA 8
Tho’ taste, tho’ 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;
Thou, only thou canst raise the meeting soul!
There are certainly some poets who feel inspired by their genius, and by their sense of discrimination to the point of a frenzy which is divine.
But the work of even these poets seems to be cold and lifeless unless you infuse your own quality of plainness into that work. Whatever be the contribution of any of these poets individually or of all these poets collectively, and howsoever charming their contribution may seem to our eyes and pleasing to our minds, it is only you, O Simplicity, who can up lift the reader’s soul which is eager to meet you.
STANZA 9
Of these let others ask,
To aid some mighty task,
I only seek to find thy temp’rate vale;
Where oft my reed might sound
To maids and shepherds round,
And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale.
Let other persons seek the help and guidance of such poets in the execution of some ambitious and vast project which they may have formed. So far as I am concerned, I only wish to find the valley where you at present dwell and which has a moderate climate. I seek your patronage, O Simplicity, in order that I may often compose poems which can be heard by the maidens and by the shepherds around me. I would like all the sons of Nature to listen to my songs and to learn from those songs what I have to tell them. I want all the rural people, both men and maidens, to listen to my songs having the quality of simplicity.