The Poetical Works of William Collins; With a MemoirCollins, William
General
The Poetical Works of William Collins; With a Memoir
Collins, William
Poetry
"And first review that long extended plain,
And yon wide groves, already past with pain!
Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we tried!
And, last, this lofty mountain's weary side!"
There is, in imitative harmony, an act of expressing a slow and
difficult movement by adding to the usual number of pauses in a verse.
This is observable in the line that describes the ascent of the
mountain:
And last || this lofty mountain's || weary side ||.
Here we find the number of pauses, or musical bars, which, in an heroic
verse, is commonly two, increased to three.
The liquid melody, and the numerous sweetness of expression, in the
following descriptive lines, is almost inimitably beautiful:
"Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain,
And once by nymphs and shepherds loved in vain!
No more the virgins shall delight to rove
By Sargis' banks, or Irwan's shady grove;
On Tarkie's mountain catch the cooling gale,
Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale."
Nevertheless, in this delightful landscape there is an obvious fault;
there is no distinction between the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly;
they are both flowery, and consequently undiversified. This could not
proceed from the poet's want of judgment, but from inattention: it had
not occurred to him that he had employed the epithet flowery twice
within so short a compass; an oversight which those who are accustomed
to poetical, or, indeed, to any other species of composition, know to be
very possible.
Nothing can be more beautifully conceived, or more pathetically
expressed, than the shepherd's apprehensions for his fair countrywomen,
exposed to the ravages of the invaders:
"In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves,
For ever famed for pure and happy loves:
In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair,
Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair!
Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief shall send;
Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend."
There is certainly some very powerful charm in the liquid melody of
sounds. The editor of these poems could never read or hear the following
verse repeated, without a degree of pleasure otherwise entirely
unaccountable:
"Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair."
Such are the Oriental Eclogues, which we leave with the same kind of
anxious pleasure we feel upon a temporary parting with a beloved
friend.
OBSERVATIONS
ON THE ODES, DESCRIPTIVE AND ALLEGORICAL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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