TO EVENING.

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
May hope, O pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear *,

Like thy own brawling 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 be 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 May not unseemly with its stillness suit; [vale ;

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 buds the day,

And many a nymph who wreaths her brows with

sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet

Prepare thy shadowy car. Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; Or find some ruin, midst its dreary dells,

Whose walls more awful nod

By thy religious gleams.
Or if chill blustering winds or driving rain
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,

That, from the mountain's side,

Views wilds, and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd 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 lingering 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 regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall

Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace
Thy gentlest influence own,
And love thy favourite name!

COLLINS.

ODES TO SLEEP.

I. () THOU whose light touch sheds the opiate dews Of bland Oblivion; thou whose power Man's wearied drooping frame renews, Oft as thou deign’st thy influence shower On my closed lids, lead me, O shadowy queen, To fairy regions, and some blissful clime Elysian ; picturing the unreal scene In Fancy's gorgeous garb and imagery sublime : And bring from out thy magic cell That potent necromantic spell Which holds the soul in wonder's trance, While pass thy airy train successive by, Rolling along the vision's ecstasy To rapt Attention's glance: Oft has the bard whom genius warms, Who marks at eve thy spectre-forms, Won from thy magic stores divine The colouring of his simple line ; And o’er the page the Muses own Rays of poetic glory thrown; And sketch'd the high wrought scenes, and bade

them glow In radiant hues of light, and Fiction's solemn show.

But far, far greater boast was thine
When Inspiration led thy band;
When not with fond illusions vain,
Such as the idle brain
Alarm with prodigy and dire portent,

Thou camest; but which when Wisdom's self be

held, Rightly she augured what thy visions meant, Shadow'd in doubtful hues by some immortal hand; When breathing mystic truths divine, Full many a seer and prophet thou hast taught, And from the Almigbty brought Behests of dread command and import high; While the rapt mind's judging eye In cloudless perspective the future caught: Nor seldom God or Angel held Converse with man; the midnight hour Illumined shone with glory's ray, And coruscations of eternal day Waved, queen of silence! o'er thy darksome bower; Heaven oped her golden portals wide, And far within her glittering courts were spied The' angelic phalanx robed in vestments bright* To earth descending slow from yon fair worlds of

light.

And still thy gracious forms await
The good man on the verge of fate;
When this world and the next between,
The Beatific Vision to the sight
Unfolding opens heaven; then floods the scene,
In boundless bliss absorbed, and deluges of light.
Thou canst the heart of guilt appal;
Thy voice, O awful Sleep, has power
To wake the dead at midnight hour,
Obedient to thy potent call:
And tyrants oft have heard with dread
The cry of vengeance thundering in their ear,

. Genesis xxviii. 12.

While the pale spectre Fear
Hangs her dire portents round the regal bed,
Horrors and woes and death : Night's demons loud
Shriek to the moon afar, from many a passing cloud.

1

Beneath the dim Earth's centre deep,
Beneath where Ocean rolls his wave,
Where ghosts their lingering sabbath keep,
And, thrown across the gulf of fate,
Where Hell her ponderous adamantine gate
Bars on the mansions of the grave,
Close by Death's door, on either hand,
O Sleep, thy shadowy kingdoms stand ;
Stretch'd on thy ebon couch supine,
Soft poppy wreaths thy temples twine;
Around thee mimic Fancy plays,
The shadow of the evening strays,
And busy murmurs creep:
While dreams in clusters thick are spread,
Like hovering mists about thy head,
That with fantastic wing thy dewy eyelids sweep.

About thy sable standard pass
Of Hopes and Fears a mingled mass,
Fluttering Wishes, gay Desires,
Sighs of Disappointment born,
Passion's unextinguish'd fires,
And Melancholy's plaint forlorn!
While from the tablet of the brain
Memory calls off her dusky train,
Dim-veil'd Illusion mocks the sight
With shortlived phantoms of delight,
And shows of promised bliss that fly
Ere the young Morn with bashful eye,