Restoration & Augustan
William Collins
William Collins (1721–1759) was born in Chichester and educated at Winchester and Oxford. He went to London to live by his pen, and his small output of odes, published in 1746, made little stir at first but is now ranked among the finest lyric poetry of the century.
His odes to Evening, Fear and Simplicity, and ‘How sleep the brave,’ are often seen as turning eighteenth-century verse toward feeling and imagination. His mind failed in his later years and he died in Chichester at thirty-seven.
Poems (24)
- Eclogue I: Selim; or, The Shepherd's Moral
- Eclogue II: Hassan; or, The Camel Driver
- Eclogue III: Abra; or, The Georgian Sultana
- Eclogue IV: Agib and Secander; or, The Fugitives
- Ode to Pity
- Ode to Fear
- Ode to Simplicity
- Ode on the Poetical Character
- Ode, Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746 (How Sleep the Brave)
- Ode to Mercy
- Ode to Liberty
- Ode to a Lady, on the Death of Colonel Ross, in the Action of Fontenoy
- Ode to Evening
- Ode to Peace
- The Manners: An Ode
- The Passions: An Ode for Music
- Ode on the Death of Thomson
- Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland
- An Epistle, Addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on His Edition of Shakespeare's Works
- Dirge in Cymbeline
- To Miss Aurelia C—r, on Her Weeping at Her Sister's Wedding
- Sonnet
- Song: The Sentiments Borrowed from Shakespeare
- Verses Written on a Paper Which Contained a Piece of Bride-Cake