Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/578

 WILLIAM COLLINS

Ode to Evening

IF aught of oaten stop, or pastoral 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-hair'd sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,

With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed

Now air is hush'd 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

Now teach me, maid composed,

To breathe some soften'd strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit,

As, musing slow, I hail

Thy genial loved return t

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 freshening dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive pleasures sweet,

Prepare thy shadowy car:

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