Ah Fear! Ah frantic Fear! I see, I see thee near. I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start, like thee disordered fly.
For lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
- "Ode to Fear"
| Another member of the Graveyard School, Collins was influenced by his friend and fellow boneyard boy Joseph Warton and by James Thomson, another Graveyarder. Collins began publishing poetry in his late teens and spent much of his life struggling to succeed as a writer. His major publication, Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1746), met with little success; Collins' work was out of the poetic mainstream in its exploration of more powerful emotional and psychological effects. Quite possibly afflicted with some sort of mental instability later in life (perhaps depression), Collins was largely forgotten by the time of his death. But the changing cultural currents of the late C18 turned in his favor. He came to be romanticized (by the Romantics, appropriately enough, especially Hazlitt and Coleridge) as a "mad poet" who early death was itself poetically tragic; Collins also was widely understood to be, in his work, a precursor of many Romantic traits. As for his contributions to the Graveyard School, some of the odes linked below will explain.... |
Ah Fear! Ah frantic Fear! I see, I see thee near. I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye! Like thee I start, like thee disordered fly. For lo, what monsters in thy train appear! - "Ode to Fear"
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