William Collins

William Collins (December 25, 1721 – June 12, 1759) was an English lyric poet, seen as one of the most influential precursors of Romanticism.

William Collins

Quotes

• In numbers warmly pure and sweetly strong.
  • Ode to Simplicity.

• Well may your hearts believe the truths I tell:
  'T is virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.
  • Oriental Eclogues. 1, Line 5. Compare: "That virtue only makes our bliss below, / And all our knowledge is ourselves to know", Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle iv, line 397.

• How sleep the brave who sink to rest
  By all their country's wishes blest!
  • Ode written in the year 1746.

• By fairy hands their knell is rung;
  By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
  There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
  To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
  And Freedom shall awhile repair,
  To dwell a weeping hermit there!
  • Ode written in the year 1746. A variation of the first two lines is "By hands unseen the knell is rung; / By fairy forms their dirge is sung".

• Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part;
  Nature in him was almost lost in Art.
  • To Sir Thomas Hammer on his Edition of Shakespeare.

Dirge (1744)

• To fair Fidele's grassy tomb
  Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
  Each opening sweet of earliest bloom,
  And rifle all the breathing spring.
  • line 1.

• Each lonely scene shall thee restore;
  For thee the tear be duly shed;
  Beloved till life can charm no more,
  And mourn'd till Pity’s self be dead.
  • line 21.

Ode to Evening (1747) [1]

• Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed 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.
  • line 9.

• For when thy folding-star arising shows
  His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
  The fragrant hours, and elves
  Who slept in buds 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 shadowy car.
  • line 21.

The Passions, an Ode for Music (1747)

• When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
  While yet in early Greece she sung.
  • Line 1.

• Fill'd with fury, rapt, inspired.
  • Line 10.

• 'T was sad by fits, by starts 't was wild.
  • Line 28.

• With eyes up-raised, as one inspired,
  Pale Melancholy sate retired,
  And from her wild sequestered seat,
  In notes by distance made more sweet,
  Poured thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul.
  • Line 57. Compare: "Sweetest melodies / Are those that are by distance made more sweet", William Wordsworth, Personal Talk, stanza 2.

• Love of peace, and lonely musing,
  In hollow murmurs died away.
  • Line 67.

• O Music! sphere-descended maid,
  Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!
  • Line 95.

How Sleep the Brave (1748)

• How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
  By all their country’s wishes blest!
  • line 1.

• By fairy hands their knell is rung,
  By forms unseen their dirge is sung.
  • line 7.

The Poet is standing in front of the cemetery of the Nation’s Great Patriots who were buried long gone and those who have left a mark in the History of the poet’s country i.e. England. These patriots were called to eternal rest after the praise worthy sacrifices they made on behalf of their country and a long chorus of praises and blessings of the people who attended their funeral and cremation. Each year, after the long shrill of the biting winter, the bright colours of spring presence of dew from dusk to dawn, returns every seasonal cycle to decorate the sacred graves of these great people. At the peak of Spring, these graves are kept in hues even more fanciful than anyone can ever imagine. Through unknown ways and unknown hands, the sounds of bells tolled after their deaths are ultimately rung and through unknown voices their mournful song is sung. Just like pilgrims, ‘Honor’ and ‘Freedom’ come to the tombs of the brave and abide there forever.

Ode Occasioned by the Death of Mr. Thomson, (1748) [2]

• In yonder Grave a Druid lies
  Where slowly winds the Stealing Wave!
  The Year's best Sweets shall duteous rise
  To deck its Poet's sylvan Grave!
  • line 1.

• But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide
  No sedge-crown'd sister now attend,
  Now waft me from the green hill's side
  Whose cold turf hides the buried friend!
  • line 29.

Criticism

• He had employed his mind chiefly on works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.
  • Samuel Johnson The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781), "William Collins" [3]