Ode to Evening
The Poem
“Ode to Evening,” a single stanza of fifty-two lines, is addressed to a goddess figure representing the time of
day in the title. This “nymph,” or “maid,” who personifies dusk, is “chaste,” “reserv’d,” and meek, in
contrast to the “bright-hair’d sun,” a male figure who withdraws into his tent, making way for night. Thus
“Eve,” or evening, is presented as the transition between light and darkness.
William Collins further stresses a female identity in his appellation “calm vot’ress.” With this feminine form
of “votary” he designates a nun, or one who vows to follow the religious life. This combination of modesty,
devotion, and “pensive Pleasures” alludes to the dominating figure of John Milton’s “Il Penseroso.”
The poem has three parts: the opening salutation, locating Eve in sequence and in the countryside; the center,
a plea for guidance in achieving a calm stoicism, with a qualification, showing the reason for the request, and
a shift to a personal view-point; and a grand finale with a roll call of the seasons and a return to a universal
dimension.
Throughout most of the poem, Collins acknowledges Eve’s authority and twilight’s pleasures, combining
pastoral imagery with classical allusions. These give the poem a Miltonic overtone, familiar to readers of
Collins’s day, and a close connection to his contemporaries, such as James Thomson and Joseph Warton.
After the opening apostrophe to Eve, nature takes over the first section (lines 3-14), with images of water in
references to “solemn springs” plus the sun’s “cloudy skirts” and “wavy bed.” The wind plays a small part
in setting the scene with only the one reference to “dying gales” subsiding to the point where “air is
hush’d.” An allusion to John Milton’s “Lycidas” appears in the auditory image which invades the stillness
in these lines: “Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d bat,/ With short, shrill shriek flits by on
leathern wing” (lines 9-10). Other noises, less ominous, come from the beetle and the bee, a “pilgrim born in
heedless hum.”
The second part of the poem starts with a request to the “maid compos’d,” who is worthy of emulation.
“Now teach me,” Collins says, to write lines in keeping with the atmosphere Eve creates. The term
“numbers” here stands not only for versification and metrics but also for poetry in general. This section splits
into the prayer itself, the details of evening’s “genial, lov’d return,” and an ominous dimension that makes
the depiction more realistic than the classical allusions do. The signal for return is the appearance of Hesperus,
the evening star. At this point, place deities, termed “Hours,” “elves,” and nymphs, become servants
preparing evening’s chariot for her entrance.
The poet takes center stage here, injecting a view of nature with “chill blustering winds” and “driving rain”
that make him reluctant to follow Eve. A scene reminiscent of William Shakespeare’s King Lear being
exposed to violent weather on the heath is softened with the sound of a church bell.
Finally, the poem presents the cyclical pageant of nature. Starting with a series of images befitting “meekest
Eve” and sharply summarizing each season, the ending brings together the benefits possibly resulting from
devotion to the goddess.
Forms and Devices
Written in imitation of the Roman poet Horace, this poem is considered a Horatian rather than a pastoral ode,
although it contains rural imagery and some conventions associated with pastoral poetry. The verse is
unrhymed, with a metrical pattern developing as follows: alternating sets of two iambic pentameter lines and
two shorter lines of iambic trimeter.
The sequence of longer and shorter couplets is more important for purposes of unity here than it would have
been had the lines been rhyming couplets. Collins’s use of couplets follows the neoclassical tradition, but his
introduction of the short trimeter lines is viewed, in that context, as an aberration. His balancing of long and
short couplets helps to structure a poem considered too short for the verse paragraphs of blank verse and too
long for one stanza. If each four-line set is viewed as a unit, the poem could be divided into thirteen stanzas.
Ultimately, the metrical balance reflects the alternation of day and night, although only a transitional part of
this cycle is the focus of the content and the imagery.
Collins uses conventional neoclassical poetic diction without resorting to extreme or ridiculous phraseology.
One possible exception is the “pilgrim born in heedless hum,” a metaphor for a bee. Primarily, however,
Collins’s metaphors stand on their own merits, sometimes coming close to clichés but not overcome by them.
Language depicting pastoral images, such as “oaten stop,” “yon western tent” of the sun, the “folding star”
of Hesperus, and the mountain and valley landscapes, establish the general tone of the poem and reflect
Collins’s neoclassicism. The Miltonic overlay created by these images, by the imitations of Miltonic style,
and by lines alluding to others by Milton cannot be ignored.
Nature imagery serves to depict how darkness begins to take over the atmosphere without fanfare and
develops a personality for Eve. The combination of these details and the adjectives used to describe Eve, such
as modest, chaste, and meek, creates a comfortable feeling.
The comforts of tone and quiet devotion are driven off, however, by personal references to the poet, who, in
spite of “willing feet,” is hiding inside the “hut,/ That, from the mountain’s side,/ Views wilds, and swelling
floods” (lines 34-36) because of the cold and rainy winds on a suggestively Shakespearean heath. The image
of spring would be overpowered by this picture, despite the sound of the church bell, were it not for the
compelling pictures created for the other seasons in the ending.
Themes and Meanings
Ostensibly, “Ode to Evening” is a nature poem, one of those often considered a prelude to the Romantic
movement or a deliberate and intentional antidote to the heroic genres most prominent in the earlier part of the
Augustan age. The poem looks forward to the Age of Sensibility, a label which poems such as Thomson’s
The Seasons (1730) and Warton’s The Enthusiast: Or, The Love of Nature (1744) helped to create. Collins’s
ode promotes scenic nature, as do these poems, in contrast to the neoclassical emphasis upon human nature.
Similarly, it even hints at the sublime in the section describing the mountain storm and the view from the hut
as well as in the images of winter at the end. Nevertheless, just as evening is neither day nor night, this poem
is neither fully pre-Romantic nor conventionally neoclassical. It is transitional, subtle, and generally quiet,
like its subject.
Even though Collins follows convention in imagery, diction, and verse form, he demonstrates that he is not a
slave to it. The ode exerts the “gentlest” of influences, as its subject does. Even the superlatives Collins uses
are not exaggerations, but the superlative forms of adjectives such as “gentle” and “meek.”
The striking passages are, first, those depicting the prospect of a violent mountain storm as well as attack by
winter on Eve’s entourage and her flowing garments; and second, the images which are more sharply focused
in the pageant of seasons which ends the poem. These seem to establish the grounds for the earlier prayer in
hopes of adopting evening’s calm demeanor and reserved behavior. Especially poignant are the lines
describing how the wind and rain of the storm keep the poet’s “willing feet” from obeying their desire to
follow Eve. These lines seem highly personal in light of Samuel Johnson’s famous phrase describing the
poet, “poor dear Collins.” Contemporaries’ accounts of Collins’s life, including those by his friends, record
mental breakdowns which are entirely relevant if one notes the poet’s own signals in this and other poems.
The allusion to Lear on the heath is not the poet’s personal equation of himself with Shakespeare’s
egotistical king; other characters who join the scene in the hut would be more suitable for comparison with
Collins’s presentation of himself. This passage is a faint echo of feelings expressed in the “Ode to Fear”
from the same volume (1746). Although “Ode to Fear” is generated by Aristotle’s discussion of pity and fear
in his concept of catharsis, the personal element is a noticeable dimension and reinforces a biographical
interpretation for both poems.
The final section ventures into a more vivid style of natural depiction. The fragrances of spring, the length of
summer days, the effect engendered by autumn colors and temperatures are just as compelling as the violence
of winter and are not overpowered by it. The apparent timidity of the earliest passages and the passion tapped
in the heath scene have a purpose within the poem itself: a careful buildup to a final celebration. Collins’s
skillful manipulation of imagery and versification, along with the consequent modulations in tone and
atmosphere, have created a poem representative of both the era and the inventive genius of the individual
poet.
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