Than fancy’s feet have ever trod.
This is rather a simile than a personification, but yet there is conveyed to us a definite impression of a shadowy figure that comes to deck the earth with beauty, like a young girl scattering flowers as she walks along.
But the workmanship of Collins in this respect is seen in its perfection in the “Ode to Evening.” There is no attempt to draw a portrait or chisel a statue; the calm, restful influence of evening, its sights and sounds that radiate peace and contentment, even the very soul of the landscape as the shades of night gather around, are suggested by master touches, whilst the slow infiltration of the twilight is beautifully suggested:
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
The central figure is still the same evanescent being, the vision of a maiden, endowed with all the grace of beauty and dignity, into whose lap “sallow Autumn” is pouring his falling leaves, or who now goes her way slowly through the tempest, while
Winter, yelling through the troublous air
Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robe.