After describing the traveller lost in the snow, the poet thus continues : In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife nor children more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense, And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows a stiffened corpse, Stretched out, and bleaching on the northern blast! As long as human passions shall animate or disturb the world, COLLINS's masterly Ode will doubtless be perused and prized: yet the gifted author suffered from neglect and poverty, and ultimately became the victim of mental disease. Some evil genius seemed to have presided over his destiny, for in early life he fell in love with a fair damsel, who was born a day before himself, and she refused to respond to his appeals. "Your case is a hard one," said a friend. “It is so indeed,” replied Collins, "for I came into the world a day after the fair." When at Magdalen College, Oxford, he was entertaining a few friends at tea. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, unexpectedly entered, and finding no one disposed to dispute with him, deliberately upset the tea-table, scattering its contents across the room. Collins, although constitutionally somewhat choleric, was so utterly confounded at the unexpected demonstration, that he took no notice of the aggressor, but calmly began picking up the broken pieces of china, mildly quoting this line of Horace : "Invenias etiam disjecti membra poeta." Now for his masterly Ode : When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, From the supporting myrtles round, Sweet lessons of her forceful art, First Fear his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords, bewildered laid, Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire, In lightnings owned his secret stings; In one rude clash he struck the lyre, With woful measures wan Despair, Low, sullen sounds his grief beguiled; 'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild. But thou, oh Hope, with eyes so fair, Still would her touch the strain prolong; She called on Echo still, through all the song; A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, And longer had she sung;-but, with a frown, Revenge impatient rose; He threw his blood-stained sword, in thunder, down, The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And, ever and anon, he beat The double drum with furious heat; And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild, unaltered mien, While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head. * With eyes upraised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired; And, from her wild, sequestered seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, Love of peace and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away. But O! how altered was its sprightlier tone, When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue, Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung, Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear; And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen spear. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial: He, with viny crown advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addrest; But soon he saw the brisk, awakening viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best: They would have thought, who heard the strain, They saw, in Tempè's vale, her native maids, Amidst the festal sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing, While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, As if he would the charming air repay, Oh, Music! sphere-descended maid, Thy mimic soul, oh, nymph endeared, Where is thy native simple heart, Oh! bid your vain endeavors cease, Confirm the tales her sons relate! Collins's grand lines, The Patriot's Grave, are among the finest of their class : How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, |