One would think she might like to retire But I hasted and planted it there. To prune the wild branches away. From the plains, from the woodlands, and groves, How the nightingales warble their loves As she may not be fond to resign. I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood-pigeons breed; But let me that plunder forbear, She will say 'twas a barbarous deed, I have heard her with sweetness unfold And she called it the sister of Love. Can a bosom so gentle remain Unmoved when her Corydon sighs? Will a nymph that is fond of the plain These plains and this valley despise ? Dear regions of silence and shade! Soft scenes of contentment and ease! If aught in her absence could please. And where are her grots and her bowers? And the face of the valleys as fine; ODE TO EVENING. BY WILLIAM COLLINS.-1720-56. [WILLIAM COLLINS, the son of a respectable tradesman, a hatter in Chichester, was born on Christmas Day, 1720. Through the assistance of his uncle, he received a college education at Oxford. He quitted that seat of learning for London in 1744, with high hopes and magnificent schemes. In 1746, he published his "Odes" and "Eclogues," but their success did not realize his sanguine expectations; and he suffered not only from disappointment, but from poverty even beyond the lot of poets. He was raised temporarily from his abject condition by a legacy of 2,000l. from his uncle; but he never recovered his spirits, and after a short time sank into a state of hopeless imbecility. He died in the year 1756, at the early age of thirty-six. His Odes, of which the most celebrated are that to "Evening" and on the "Passions," are, without doubt, among the first productions of British Poetry.] Fought of oaten stop, or pastoral song, IF May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear Thy springs, and dying gales; O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed: Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat, With soft 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, To breathe some softened strain, Whose numbers stealing through thy dark'ning vale, As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial loved return! For when thy folding-star arising shows And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, Prepare thy shadowy car; Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; By thy religious gleams. Or if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, And hamlets brown, and dim discovered spires, The gradual dusky veil. While spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, While sallow autumn fills thy lap with leaves; And rudely rends thy robes; So long regardful of thy quiet rule, And love thy favourite name. [THOMAS GRAY, the son of a scrivener, was born in London in 1716; he was educated at Eton, and afterwards at Cambridge, where his life was chiefly spent in his favourite studies. In 1739 he was induced by his friend Horace Walpole to join him in a Continental tour; they had some slight quarrel, and Gray returned, in the year 1741. He planned many literary schemes, but lacked the energy to bring them to a completion. In 1747 he published his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," and in 1751 his well-known "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," possibly the noblest elegy in the language; of the appreciation of this by men under the most exigent circumstances, Lord Stanhope, in his History, gives a |