On whom that ravening brood of fate,
Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait."

That nutritive enthusiasm, which cherishes the seeds of poetry, and
which is, indeed, the only soil wherein they will grow to perfection,
lays open the mind to all the influences of fiction. A passion for
whatever is greatly wild or magnificent in the works of nature seduces
the imagination to attend to all that is extravagant, however unnatural.
Milton was notoriously fond of high romance and gothic diableries; and
Collins, who in genius and enthusiasm bore no very distant resemblance
to Milton, was wholly carried away by the same attachments.

"Be mine to read the visions old,
Which thy awakening bards have told:
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true."

"On that thrice hallow'd eve," &c.

There is an old traditionary superstition, that on St. Mark's eve, the
forms of all such persons as shall die within the ensuing year make
their solemn entry into the churches of their respective parishes, as
St. Patrick swam over the Channel, without their heads.

ODE TO SIMPLICITY.

The measure of the ancient ballad seems to have been made choice of for
this ode, on account of the subject; and it has, indeed, an air of
simplicity, not altogether unaffecting:

"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 evening musings slow,
Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear."

This allegorical imagery of the honeyed store, the blooms, and mingled
murmurs of Hybla, alluding to the sweetness and beauty of the Attic
poetry, has the finest and the happiest effect: yet, possibly, it will
bear a question, whether the ancient Greek tragedians had a general
claim to simplicity in any thing more than the plans of their drama.
Their language, at least, was infinitely metaphorical; yet it must be
owned that they justly copied nature and the passions, and so far,
certainly, they were entitled to the palm of true simplicity; the
following most beautiful speech of Polynices will be a monument of
this, so long as poetry shall last:

~--------polydakrys d' aphikomen
Chronios idon melathra, kai bomous theon,
Gymnasia th' oisin enetraphen, Dirkes, th' hydor,
Hon ou dikaios apelatheis, xenen polin
Naio, di' osson nam echon dakryrrhooun.
All' ek gar algous algos au, se derkomai
Kara xyrekes, kai pepl