Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake
William Collins (17211759)Ode to Evening
I
May hope, chaste eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales,
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed:
With short, shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,
May, not unseemly, with its stillness suit,
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return!
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant hours, and elves
Who slept in flowers the day,
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car.
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile,
Or upland fallows grey
Reflect its last cool gleam.
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That from the mountain’s side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest eve!
While summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light;
Or winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robes;
Shall fancy, friendship, science, rose-lipped health,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And hymn thy favourite name!