ode to evening summary explanation
Answers
Ode to evening is a poem written by William Collins. Here I will be dissecting this poem. I haven’t read this poem or had contact with any critical reviews or summaries before so what I write is my own interpretation of the poem. Hopefully, I will be able to do justice the text. I will also be listing out the queries and the problems that I have left at the end of the poem and trying to resolve them.
Lets take it on a line by line basis first
If aught of oaten stop, or past’ral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
If songs of the oaten or the pastoral songs stop,
Then I wish, chaste eve, to lull your modest ears
In this poem, the poet writes about the time of the Evening, which he has personified as ‘Eve’. It might also refer to The goddess of Evening, Hesperides. He says to her, that if one day; she comes to realize that the oaten songs or the rural melodies have ceased (oaten being the archaic word for a musical pipe crafted out of straw). Then he hopes to the unwed Eve to be able to comfort her virgin ears by singing a song to her.
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,
like your own sadness springs,
your springs, and resting gales,
In the following lines, the spring is used in a sense of engendering, like water comes out of a fountain. The other time, it is used as a reference to the season of spring– a season in which rustic old things die. Likewise, the poet refers to the winds which die.
This means that in the time of her, the eve, like her sadness, emanate dying tempests and season of cessation of all life, activity.
O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed;
o nubile maiden, while now the bright sun,
has set to the western side, whose misty skirts,
which are interlaced with a delicate fabric
overhang his wavy resting place.
The writer is calling out to the shy nymph. According to mythology, a nymph is a nubile young maiden or a virgin of any age.
The poet uses a lot of imagery here. The time is for the sun to set, who is personified as a man wearing a ‘cloudy skirt’ – a skirt made of elegant, exquisite interlace of clouds. The skirt is ethereal because even a moderately strong gust of wind can immediately cleave it in two. Yet, a calm surrounding prevails. This ‘skirt’ hangs over the sea which forms the wavy bed where the sun might seem to set in a distance.
Now air is hushed, save where the weak-ey’d bat
With short 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
Against the pilgrim, borne in heedless hum:
now that the air is silent, except where the visionless bat
darts by, on his leathery wings, making a screeching noise
and where the beetle blows
his small and churlish horn every time he wakes up
in the middle of the dusk,
against the pilgrim, drifting in a careless melody