Poem of the Week – Ode to Evening by William Collins
In the mid-18th century, William Collins was considered one of England’s greatest poets. Along with his contemporary, Thomas Gray, he sought to reinvigorate traditional forms such as odes and eclogues by introducing new subject matter and fresh sentiments.
His lyrical talent exemplified the transition in English literature from the Neoclassical period to the Romantic era. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1743, he moved to London and began his literary career, where he befriended eminent figures like David Garrick and Dr Johnson. Despite his close association with the famous man-of-letters, Dr Johnson lambasted Collins’ poetry in his celebrated The Lives of the Poets, calling his work contrived and crudely executed. Nonetheless, a musical beauty is still discernible in odes like this week’s selection, Ode to Evening.
Ode to Evening by William Collins (1747)
If aught of oaten stop, or past’ral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,
O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed;
Now air is hushed, save where the weak-ey’d bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn
As oft he rises ‘midst the twilight path
Against the pilgrim, borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,
Whose numbers stealing through thy dark’ning vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return.
For when thy folding star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and elves
Who slept in flowers the day,
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge
And sheds the fresh’ning dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shad’wy car.
Then lead, calm votress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile
Or upland fallows grey
Reflect its last cool gleam.
But when chill blust’ring winds, or driving rain,
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut
That from the mountain’s side
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve;
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy ling’ring light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp’d Health,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And hymn thy fav’rite name!