William Collins (1721 – 1759)
English lyric poet, seen as one of the most influential precursors of Romanticism.
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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.
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.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.
In numbers warmly pure and sweetly strong.
How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country’s wishes blest!
'T was sad by fits, by starts 't was wild.
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
Fill'd with fury, rapt, inspired.
Well may your hearts believe the truths I tell:
'T is virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.
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!
Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part;
Nature in him was almost lost in Art.
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!
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.
O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!
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.
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.
When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung.
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!
Love of peace, and lonely musing,
In hollow murmurs died away.
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