Ode to Evening by William Collins - critical appreciation

Ode to Evening

William Collins

Q: Critical appreciation of Ode to Evening by William Collins.

Answer: Ode to Evening is one among the best poems of Collins in his collection 'Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects'. It is composed in a single stanza of fifty two lines with un-rhyming pattern. This beautiful poem is addressed to the evening that is considered the goddess, nymph or maid. The personified evening is chaste, reserved and meek opposite to the characteristics of the bright sun.

This poem has mainly three parts; the primary one is that the opening salutation to the evening, the other is that the center where the poet requests for the guidance in receiving peace, and therefore the last one is his personal point of view to return to the overall aspect.

When the poem commences, the speaker humbly requests to the spirit of Evening to grant him the skill of singing so that he could please her. She is a fascinating part of nature that sometimes seems like in a pensive mood. She is additionally keen on the speaker’s song. The fascinating nymphs in the evening that come from the buds of flowers bring fragrance in the peaceful evening environment. To form the environment more soothing, the speaker’s song should be very soft like that of the murmur of the streams.

The only sound that the speaker listens is that of the cry of the bat and therefore the beetle. He aspires to travel to the ruined building in some lonely valley to observe the sweetness of the evening, but he's disturbed by the rain and therefore the wind. So, he decides to go to the mountainside to ascertain the descending evening. Within the end, the speaker admits that the charm of the evening should still bring peace and harmony and to inspire friendship, poets, science and lovers of the peace.

The application of the femininity in describing the evening and characterizing her is one among the strengths of Collins. Words and phrases like ‘chaste Eve’, ‘fancy’, ‘rose-lipped’, ‘nymph reserved’, and ‘maid composed’ are a number of the illustrations of the utilization of the femininity within the poem. These traits to the evening add the concept of an attention grabbing woman who is reserved and patient.

The poet has used the concept of the evening as how to place his view on the lady as contradictory figure, something mysterious and also generous. The evening is merging point of the daylight and therefore the sunset, in a way, it's a transition from light to dark, day to nighttime. Depicting the negative side of the evening, the poet says, it symbolically hides all the faces of the daytime whether good or bad. In its darkness, everything is same and mysterious. It’s the eve that makes sure that the next day is certainly going to be bright and sunny. In that sense, evening is the seed of the hope and life of the next day.

Collins personifies evening during this poem as ‘chaste Eve’ which is a Biblical allusion to Eve. The comparison of the evening to the Biblical Eve is ambiguous. If the fallen and flawed state of Eve is associated to the evening, then the evening becomes something negative and cursed state of the day when the bright light of the sun is missed and set. But, if the poet is comparing evening with the innocence and purity of Eve, then the evening means a beautiful time of the day when everything comes to the resting point with peace and harmony all around. The intention of the poet is still ambiguous.

*****

👉 ‘Ode to Autumn’ by John Keats - Natural Aspects of Autumn

👉 ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ - John Keats' Romanticism with real and ideal

👉 ‘Ode to Evening’ by William Collins - critical appreciation

👉 ‘Gulliver's Travels’ by Jonathan Swift - S.A.Q

👉 ‘Ode to Evening’ by William Collins - S.A.Q

👉 ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray - S.A.Q

👉 ‘Ode to the West Wind’ - (Canto 1) by Percy Bysshe Shelley