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 Copy j M LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 - 
 
 SELECTED LYRICS 
 
 FROM 
 
 Gray 
 
 AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Edited for School Use 
 BY JOSEPH A. SLATTERY, S. J. 
 
 
 
 Loyola University Press 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 SELECTED LYRICS 
 
 FROM 
 
 GRAY 
 
 AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 Joseph A'. Slattery, S. J. 
 
 ^=^/ 
 
 LOYOLA UNIVERSIT1 T PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
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 6 
 
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 COPYRIGHT, 1922 
 
 BY 
 
 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY 
 CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 DEC 1372, 
 
 ©C1A6 92 37 7 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume has been prepared with a view to helping high- 
 school students towards an understanding of the principles 
 which underlie force and charm in poetic language, particu- 
 larly as exemplified in the lyrics of Thomas Gray. To this 
 end there are embodied in the work a discussion of the general 
 literary characteristics of the poet's age, specimens of con- 
 temporary work in lyric poetry, critical notes and exercises 
 intended to assist the student in arriving at an appreciation 
 of each poem as a whole, and in the case of Gray, also of the 
 power and beauty of his diction. 
 
 The selections from Gray are intended to be studied 
 minutely. Selections from other poets are given to illustrate 
 the work of Gray by representing the literary atmosphere in 
 which he lived, and to emphasize his personal characteristics 
 by the contrasts or parallels which they afford. 
 
 Similarly, the biographies have been written not as compre- 
 hensive accounts of Gray's most famous contemporaries, but 
 rather as explaining their relation to him, and as illustrating 
 their approximation to or divergence from his manner of life 
 and his views upon it. 
 
 The notes, it is well to remark, are intended to serve the 
 pupil in making his prelection or preparation for recitation. 
 The teacher will assign a number of lines or pages for home 
 study, and during the next recitation ply the class with ques- 
 tions based upon the notes. This done, it is very desirable 
 that he should interpret the poem to the class, giving its 
 setting in a few vivid sentences, and reading the lines with 
 all the dramatic power at his command. In conclusion he 
 should briefly and enthusiastically, comment on those features 
 of the piece in which he is especially interested. Nearty all 
 success in this work, an excellent authority tells us, depends 
 upon the amount of keen enthusiasm the teacher possesses and 
 manifests for the matter in hand. 
 
4 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 After the poem has been thus read and studied, an exercise 
 performed either at home or in class will be found most useful 
 for strengthening the pupil's grasp on the ideas he has gained. 
 Several exercises adapted to this end are to be found at the 
 end of the notes, on page 76. 
 
 For a systematic treatment of force and elegance of 
 language the student is referred to chapters 2 and 3 of Model 
 English, by Francis P. Donnelly, S. J., and for a discussion 
 of poetic diction to Appendix 2 of A Study of Poetry, by 
 Francis M. Connell, S. J. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The poems printed in this volume are very different in 
 character from those which are being written by the poets of 
 our generation. Indeed, unless the student has studied some 
 work such as Goldsmith's Deserted Village, he probably will 
 find them very different from anything that he has ever read 
 and will be puzzled by their very formal and somewhat arti- 
 ficial language. In order to understand more fully the spirit 
 of these poems it will be well briefly to examine the literary 
 characteristics of the period just preceding the birth of Gray. 
 
 Between 1640 and 1688 the English Parliament and the 
 English kings waged a bitter struggle over the question of the 
 derivation and the extent of the power of the king. This 
 struggle entailed civil war, the execution of a king, an unsuc- 
 cessful attempt at popular government, the restoration of the 
 dethroned royal family, its second dethronement and the 
 bestowal of the Crown upon a Dutch prince, William III of 
 Orange. 
 
 During the reigns of William and of his immediate suc- 
 cessors, the great issue of the limitation of the royal preroga- 
 tive which had caused the civil war was tacitly decided in 
 favor of Parliament. At once political parties sprang into 
 being and began that endless strife which is the history of 
 democratic governments. Moreover, the succession of each 
 monarch brought up anew the religious question, each reign 
 saw England projecting or participating in a war for world 
 supremacy with the result that men had little time or interest 
 for the study of literature as an amusement; but, on the con- 
 trary, the rivalry of parties called forth a host of writers 
 who took up the pen as a weapon of controversy or as a means 
 of earning a livelihood. Chief of these were Defoe, Steele, 
 Addison and Swift, names which stand high in the list of 
 masters in English prose. Poets, also, were enlisted in the 
 strife. Hence, the poetry of the age had the same qualities 
 as the prose and dealt with the same subjects. From a study 
 of classical models, and from the example of the two leaders, 
 Dryden and Pope, a set of critical principles was evolved to 
 
6 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 which all verse writers were expected to conform, in meter, 
 rhyme and diction. Almost the only verse form used was the 
 ten syllabled rhymed couplet. Almost the only subjects treated 
 were those that had to do with man in his social relations. 
 The literature of the age may be summed up as polite, satiric 
 and didactic. 
 
 It was polite somewhat in the Latin sense of the word, that 
 is, "polished," finished, in good form and taste, and with that 
 touch of conventionality, self -consciousness and insincerity 
 which commonly goes with worldy fine manners. 
 
 This quality of style is undoubtedly traceable to the influence 
 of Virgil from whom it was imitated by Dryden, who taught 
 it to Pope and through him to all the rest. Now perhaps the 
 most striking and characteristic quality of Virgil's diction is 
 its artificiality, that is, the expression of a simple and com- 
 monplace idea by a novel and pompous expression. Thus in 
 his first eclogue, Virgil, instead of the very tame phrase, "You 
 will enjoy cool shade," substitutes the rather extraordinary, 
 "You will lay hold of shady coolness." This artificiality is 
 praised and practised and advocated as a virtue of style by 
 Horace, who, after Virgil, was most potent in forming the 
 taste of the eighteenth century. As we might expect, so easy 
 a device for "making poetry" was enthusiastically adopted and 
 pitiably abused by those who lacked the imagination of Virgil 
 and the wit of Horace. Yet in the hands of those, who, like 
 Gray and Pope, were not entirely deficient in either, the device 
 like that of personification becomes an effective means of 
 expression, or as they would put it, "an adornment of their 
 Muse." 
 
 Secondly, the poetry of the age was largely satirical, as we 
 might expect from its constant employment in literary war- 
 fare. This, its satirical nature, had much to do with the 
 preceding quality of polish. For criticism to be effective must 
 never be cumbrous, but brief and pointed as the sting of a 
 wasp. 
 
 Thirdly, it was didactic or "Moral." Why the eighteenth 
 century should have been so fond of the statement of moral 
 principles and maxims is not clear. Certainly it was from no 
 passionate zeal for putting them into practice. Pope's lines: 
 
 Honor and shame from no condition rise; 
 Act well your part, there all the honor lies, 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 7 
 
 though little exemplified in his own life or in the lives ot 
 many of his notable contemporaries, was the kind of sentiment 
 sure to meet universal applause. 
 
 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan 
 The proper study of mankind is man, 
 
 was a favorite quotation, though the object of most men's 
 study was to find the weak points of their adversaries with a 
 view to ridiculing them. 
 
 The poets of the early eighteenth century, then, are the 
 poets of man in society; they confine themselves almost ex- 
 clusively to this topic and care little for any other; they love 
 the "sweet shady side of Pall Mall"; they have their limits, 
 but within these limits they are unsurpassed for keen observa- 
 tion and for brilliant aphorism. Let us not quarrel with them 
 because they are not what we are accustomed to think poets 
 must be, but rather let us enjoy what they have given us, 
 being assured that in its own kind it could scarcely be better. 
 
 The qualities which we have been enumerating may be fairly 
 exemplified in the following lines from Pope's Epistle to 
 Augustus (King George II), a German prince whose father 
 had blundered into the English throne. Aside from his hardy 
 physical courage, he was a thoroughly contemptible creature, 
 interested in little besides the petty military and political 
 movements in his German princedom of Hanover. Pope 
 writes : 
 
 While you, great Patron of Mankind, sustain 
 The balanced world and open all the main; 
 Your country, chief in arms, abroad defend, 
 At home, with morals, arts and laws amend; 
 How shall the Muse from such a Monarch steal 
 An hour and not defraud the public weal*? 
 
 George II, meanwhile, was allowing Spain to close the sea 
 to English vessels; he was spending his time in Hanover to 
 the neglect of England; he had no morals, cared nothing for 
 what he called "Bainting and Boetry" and exercised no influ- 
 ence on English legislation. The satire is obvious. 
 
 Scarcely less obvious is the careful finish of the expression. 
 Note how neatly each thought is enclosed in its couplet, and 
 how clearly it is emphasized by the vigorous rhyme. Note 
 
8 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 also how delicate, yet how telling is the balance between the 
 first and second half of the second line, also between the third 
 line and the fourth. The diction is formal and "Classic/' 
 at least in the case of the words Patron, amend, the Muse and 
 weal. 
 
 The formal didacticism of the age is exhibited in the follow- 
 ing couplets by Pope : 
 
 A little learning is a dangerous thing. 
 Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring. 
 
 Good nature and good sense must ever join; 
 To err is human, to forgive, divine. 
 
 Words are like leaves; and where they most abound 
 Much fruit of sense beneath is seldom found. 
 
 In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold 
 
 Alike fantastic, if too new or old: 
 
 Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
 
 Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 
 
 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance 
 As those move easiest who learned to dance. 
 
 We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; 
 Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so. 
 
 Hope springs eternal in the human breast 
 Man never is, but always to be blest. 
 
 Order is heaven's first law; and this confessed, 
 Some are and must be greater than the rest. 
 
 A wit's a feather and a chief's a rod; 
 
 An honest man's the noblest work of God. 
 
 Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
 As to be hated needs but to be seen; 
 Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 
 
 Such was the school of poetry which was in the ascendency 
 in the youth and early manhood of Gray, Goldsmith, Collins 
 and Cowper. But before any of them had reached middle age, 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 9 
 
 Pope's star had set and the tide of classicism was running out. 
 By no means a mediocre or a common genius is the genius of 
 a Pope or a Horace which lights upon a crystal amid the 
 gravel of civilized fashion and frivolity, which grinds and 
 polishes until it has produced a gem. Nor is it a genius 
 congenial to many natures, even among men of the world; 
 it requires too much breadth and objectivity and imperturb- 
 ability. Now, none of the poets who fill up the latter eigh- 
 teenth century was a man of the world. Gray made the 
 nearest approach to it, but he played the part badly. He had 
 the instincts, the habits, and the bashful manners of the 
 scholar, was more at home in his study than in the drawing 
 room. Goldsmith clubbed with the wits of the coffee-house 
 and was told by way of compliment that "he wrote like an 
 angel, but talked like poor Poll." Collins' place was at the 
 University. He went up to the city to meet ruin, "despondency 
 and madness." Thomson was a lover of nature and a haunter 
 of the "Castle of Indolence." Cowper was the poet of humble 
 childlike religion and of the pathos of common daily life. 
 Consequently, these men did not confine themselves to social 
 topics, but turned to simpler and sweeter, or as we might say 
 more natural themes. 
 
 But their language remained the language of formalism. 
 For these men looked up to Pope. They believed he had 
 achieved perfection in his art by the only way in which it 
 could have been achieved, and they set themselves humbly to 
 learn of him and of his masters. Their aim was to express 
 sublime concepts in noble and dignified language. Their 
 fault was that they failed often to see that their subjects did 
 not call for and would not support a lofty style. Hence the 
 frequent impression which they give of artificiality and 
 insincerity. Perhaps this discrepancy between thought and 
 language could be nowhere illustrated in short space better 
 than in the introduction to Thomson's lines on beauty. 
 
 Beauty deserves the homage of the Muse: 
 Shall mine, rebellious, the dear theme refuse? 
 No; while my breast respires the vital air, 
 Wholly I am devoted to the fair. 
 Beauty I'll sing in my sublimest lays, 
 I burn to give her just immortal praise. 
 
10 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 The heavenly maid with transport I'll pursue 
 To her abode and all her graces view. 
 
 Thomson is evidently striving to express, — but through what 
 different means ! the same feeling which Rosetti confesses in 
 the following very modern sonnet : 
 
 Under the arch of Life, where love and death, 
 Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw 
 Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe 
 I drew it in as simply as my breath. 
 Her's are the eyes which, over and beneath, 
 The sky and sea bend on thee — which can draw, 
 By sea or sky or woman, to one law, 
 The allotted bondsman of her palm and wreath. 
 
 This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise 
 
 Thy hand and voice shake still, — long known to thee 
 
 By flying voice and fluttering hem, — the beat 
 
 Following her daily of thy heart and feet, 
 
 How passionately and irretrievably 
 
 In what fond flight, how many ways and days ! 
 
 If one could read these two passages aright he might under- 
 stand the full difference between the poetry of the eighteenth 
 and that of the twentieth century. 
 
THOMAS GRAY 
 1716—1771 
 
 The recorded events in Gray's quiet life are few and unim- 
 portant. He was born in London in 1716, of a middle class 
 merchant family. His father, however, was a money scrivener 
 or, as we would say, a broker, and a dissipated, cruel, and 
 possibly deranged man. We are told that he neglected and 
 abused his family even to the extent of refusing to provide 
 for his son's education and finally for his wife's support. She 
 left him, accordingly, and by her own exertions maintained 
 Thomas at Eton. From this school he passed to Cambridge 
 where he graduated with honors in 1739 and then spent three 
 years in travelling on the continent. 
 
 In 1741 he returned to England, and after a short stay with 
 his mother and sisters at the little village of Stoke-Pogis near 
 London, he settled in Cambridge, where he remained till his 
 death except for a few excursions in the northern hills and, 
 during his mother's lifetime, regular visits to Stoke-Pogis. 
 
 This retired life was the one for which Gray was most fitted 
 naturally and the one which from his own preference he chose. 
 He was by nature a recluse, and he found in abstruse studies 
 his most congenial employment and his best remedy for the 
 mental depression and physical ailments which had afflicted 
 him from boyhood. He thus writes of himself to a friend : 
 
 I have at the distance of a half a mile, through a 
 green lane, a forest ... all my own; at least as good 
 as so, for I spy no living thing but myself. It is a 
 little chaos of mountains and precipices ... and crags 
 that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more 
 dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most 
 venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, 
 that, like most other ancient people, are always dream- 
 ing out their old stories of the winds. At the foot of 
 one of these squats me, L and there grows to the trunk 
 for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive 
 squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise be- 
 fore he had an Eve; but I think he did not use to read 
 "Virgil" as I commonly do here. 
 
 11 
 
12 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 We see that Gray's habitual melancholy was brightened by 
 a playful sense of humor. This won for him the devotion of 
 friends and even showed itself occasionally in his poetry. But 
 this poetry was for the most part the product of painstaking 
 care and of the most rigorous self-criticism, for Gray was 
 classic in a truer sense than Pope. He could not fully sym- 
 pathize with his dry and artificial manner and broke away 
 into a more lyric form and into subjects more congenial than 
 satire and criticism. These subjects were simpler, more nat- 
 ural or, in a literary sense, more "Romantic" than had been 
 treated since the Restoration. To Gray belongs the credit of 
 re-introducing them to English Poetry. Indeed he anticipated 
 by half a century the Romantic or "back to nature" movement 
 which has lasted till our own times. In one of his letters the 
 poet sets down what to him was "one principal event of my 
 history," a view of the seacoast before five o'clock in the 
 morning, with the moon setting and the sun rising. "I saw 
 the clouds," he says, "and dark vapours open gradually to 
 right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, 
 and the tide as it flowed gently in upon the sands, first 
 whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at 
 once a little line of insufferable brightness that (before I can 
 write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to 
 a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen. It is very 
 odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as 
 long as the sun, or at least as long as I endure. I wonder 
 whether anybody ever saw it before? I hardly believe it." 
 
 It may now be asked why Gray did not express himself 
 more fully in poetry, since poetry was his natural form of 
 expression. Matthew Arnold says, "He was in his fifty-fifth 
 year when he died, and he lived in ease and leisure, yet a few 
 pages hold all his poetry; he never spoke out in poetry. — 
 Gray, with the qualities of mind and soul of a genuine poet, 
 was isolated in. his century. Maintaining and fortifying them 
 by lofty studies, he yet could not fully educe and enjoy them; 
 the want of a genial atmosphere, the failure of sympathy in 
 his contemporaries, were too great." 
 
 Gray himself once wrote to his friend, Horace Walpole: 
 "As to what you say to me civilly, that I ought to write more, 
 I will be candid and avow to you, that till fourscore and 
 upwards, whenever the humor takes me, I will write; because 
 I like it, and because I like myself better when I do so. If I 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 13 
 
 do not write much it is because I cannot." Moreover Gray 
 knew himself, and the critical faculty which was so strongly 
 developed in him was exercised on his own powers of produc- 
 tion. He criticised his poetry before he wrote it, and therefore 
 wrote little. Matthew Arnold continues: "Gray said himself 
 that 'the style he aimed at was extreme conciseness of expres- 
 sion, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical.' Compared, not with 
 the work of the great masters of the golden ages of poetry, 
 but with the poetry of his own contemporaries in general, 
 Gray may be said to have reached, in style, the excellence 
 at which he aimed." 
 
 If we seek a further reason for his scanty production we 
 shall probably find it is in his desire to appear as he was, a 
 gentleman with scholarly inclinations rather than as a pro- 
 fessional writer. For the authors of that day were either high 
 officials of the government or starvelings in Grub Street. So 
 great indeed was this desire, born of natural reserve, that we 
 read he was at first annoyed at the great attention attracted 
 by the "Elegy" and at the renown it gave him. 
 
 This reserve doubtless it was, together with his disinclination 
 to force himself to produce poetry by order, that lead him to 
 refuse the laureateship in 1757 and to continue living on his 
 own fortune at Cambridge. The only position of honor or 
 emolument which he filled was that of Professor of Modern 
 History at the University. This he received in 1768, and held 
 until his death three vears later. 
 
14 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 LYRICS BY GRAY 
 Ode On the Spring 
 
 Lo! where the rosy-bosom 'd Hours, 
 
 Fair Venus ' train, appear, 
 Disclose the long-expecting flowers 
 
 And wake the purple year ! 
 The Attic warbler pours her throat 5 
 
 Responsive to the cuckoo's note, 
 The untaught harmony of Spring : 
 While, whispering pleasure as they fly, 
 Cool zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky 
 
 Their gather 'd fragrance fling. 10 
 
 Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch 
 
 A broader, browner shade, 
 Where e'er the rude and moss-grown beech 
 
 O'er canopies the glade, 
 Beside some water 's rushy brink 15 
 
 With me the Muse shall sit, and think 
 (At ease reclined in rustic state) 
 How vain the ardour of the crowd, 
 How low, how little are the proud, 
 
 How indigent the great ! 20 
 
 Still is the toiling hand of Care ; 
 
 The panting herds repose : 
 Yet hark, how thro ' the peopled air 
 
 The busy murmur glows ! 
 The insect-youth are on the wing, 25 
 
 Eager to taste the honied spring 
 And float amid the liquid noon : 
 Some lightly o'er the current skim, 
 Some show their gaily-gilded trim, 
 
 Quick-glancing to the sun. 30 
 
 To Contemplation's sober eye 
 Such is the race of Man : 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 15 
 
 And they that creep, and they that fly 
 Shall end where they began. 
 
 Alike the Busy and the Gay 35 
 
 But flutter thro' life's little day, 
 
 In Fortune's varying colours drest: 
 
 Brush 'd by the hand of rough Mischance, 
 Or chill'd by age, their airy dance ■ 
 They leave, in dust to rest. 40 
 
 Methinks I hear in accents low 
 
 The sportive kind reply : 
 Poor moralist ! and what are thou ? 
 
 A solitary fly ! 
 Thy joys no glittering female meets, 45 
 
 No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, 
 No painted plumage to display: 
 On hasty wings thy youth is flown ; 
 Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone — 
 
 We frolic while 't is Mav. 50 
 
 Ode On the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude 
 
 Now the golden Morn aloft 
 
 "Waves her dew-bespangled wing, 
 With vermeil cheek and whisper soft 
 
 She woos the tardy Spring: 
 Till April starts, and calls around 5 
 
 The sleeping fragrance from the ground, 
 And lightly o 'er the living scene 
 Scatters his freshest, tenderest green. 
 
 New-born flocks, in rustic dance, 
 
 Frisking ply their feeble feet ; 10 
 
 Forgetful of their wintry trance 
 
 The birds his presence greet: 
 But chief, the sky-lark warbles high 
 His trembling, thrilling ecstasy; 
 And lessening from the dazzled sight, 15 
 
 Melts into air and liquid light. 
 
16 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Yesterday the sullen year 
 
 Saw the snowy whirlwind fly; 
 Mute was the music of the air, 
 
 The herd stood drooping by : 20 
 
 Their raptures now that wildly flow 
 No yesterday nor morrow know ; 
 ; T is Man alone that joy descries 
 With forward and reverted eyes. 
 
 Smiles on past misfortune's brow 25 
 
 Soft reflection's hand can trace, 
 And o 'er the cheek of sorrow throw 
 
 A melancholy grace ; 
 While hope prolongs our happier hour, 
 Or deepest shades, that dimly lour 30 
 
 And blacken round our weary way, 
 Gilds with a gleam of distant day. 
 
 Still, where rosy pleasure leads, 
 
 See a kindred grief pursue : 
 Behind the steps that misery treads 35 
 
 Approaching comfort view: 
 The hues of bliss more brightly glow 
 Chastised by sabler tints of woe, 
 And blended form, with artful strife, 
 The strength and harmony of life. 40 
 
 See the wretch that long has tost 
 
 On the thorny bed of pain, 
 At length repair his vigour lost 
 
 And breathe and walk again : 
 The meanest floweret of the vale, 45 
 
 The simplest note that swells the gale, 
 The common sun, the air, the skies, 
 To him are opening paradise. 
 
 Ode On a Distant Prospect of Eton College 
 
 Ye distant spires, yet antique towers 
 That crown the watery glade, 
 
LYRICS PROM GRAY AND IIS CONTEMPORARIES 17 
 
 Where grateful Science still adores 
 
 Her Henry's holy shade; 
 And ye, that from the stately brow 5 
 
 Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below 
 Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, 
 Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
 Wanders the hoary Thames along 
 
 His silver-winding way : 10 
 
 Ah happy hills ! ah pleasing shade ! 
 
 Ah fields beloved in vain ! 
 Where once my careless childhood stray 'd, 
 
 A stranger yet to pain ! 
 I feel the gales that from ye blow 15 
 
 A momentary bliss bestow, 
 As waving fresh their gladsome wing 
 My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
 And, redolent of joy and youth, 
 
 To breathe a second spring. 20 
 
 Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen 
 
 Full many a sprightly race ^ 
 
 Disporting on thy margent green 
 The paths of pleasure trace ; 
 
 Who foremost now delight to cleave 25 
 
 With pliant arm, thy glassy wave ? 
 
 The captive linnet which enthral ? 
 
 What idle progeny succeed 
 
 To chase the rolling circle 's speed 
 
 Or urge the flying ball ? 30 
 
 While some on earnest business bent 
 
 Their murmuring labours ply 
 'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint 
 
 To sweeten liberty : 
 Some bold adventurers disdain 35 
 
 The limits if their little reign 
 And unknown regions dare descry : 
 Still as they run they look behind, 
 
18 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 They hear a voice in every wind, 
 
 And snatch a fearful joy. 40 
 
 Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed, 
 
 Less pleasing when possest ; 
 The tear forgot as soon as shed, 
 
 The sunshine of the breast : 
 Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue, 45 
 
 Wild wit, invention ever new, 
 And lively cheer, of vigour born ; 
 The thoughtless day, the easy night, 
 The spirits pure, the slumbers light, 
 
 That fly th' approach of morn. 50 
 
 Alas! regardless of their doom 
 
 The little victims play ; 
 No sense have they of ills to come 
 
 Nor care beyond to-day : 
 Yet see how all around them wait 55 
 
 The ministers of human fate 
 And black Misfortune 's baleful train ! 
 Ah, show them where in ambush stand 
 To seize their prey, the murderous band ! 
 
 Ah, tell them they are men ! 60 
 
 These shall the fury Passions tear, 
 
 The vultures of the mind, 
 Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, 
 
 And Shame that sculks behind; 
 Or pining Love shall waste their youth, 65 
 
 Or Jealousy with rankling tooth 
 That inly gnaws the secret heart, 
 And Envy wan, and faded Care, 
 Grim-visaged, comfortless Despair, 
 
 And Sorrow's piercing dart, 70 
 
 Ambition this shall tempt to rise, 
 
 Then whirl the wretch from high 
 
 To bitter Scorn a sacrifice 
 And grinning Infamy. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 19 
 
 The stings of Falsehood those shall try 75 
 
 And hard Uiikindness' alter 'd eye, 
 That mocks the tear it forced to flow : 
 And keen Remorse with blood defiled, 
 And moody Madness laughing wild 
 
 Amid severest woe. 80 
 
 Lo, in the vale of years beneath 
 
 A griesly troop are seen, 
 The painful family of Death, 
 
 More hideous than their queen: 
 This racks the joints, this fires the veins, 85 
 
 That every labouring sinew strains, 
 Those in the deeper vitals rage : 
 Lo ! Poverty, to fill the band, 
 That numbs the soul with icy hand, 
 
 And slow-consuming Age. 90 
 
 To each his sufferings : all are men, 
 
 Condemned alike to groan; 
 The tender for another's pain; 
 
 Th' unfeeling for his own. 
 Yet, ah ! Why should they know their fate, 95 
 
 Since sorrow never comes too late, 
 And happiness too swiftly flies? 
 Thought would destroy their paradise. 
 No more; — where ignorance is bliss, 
 
 } T is folly to be wise. 100 
 
 Ode On the Death of a Favourite Cat 
 
 'T was on a lofty vase's side, 
 "Where China's gayest art had dy'd 
 
 The azure flowers that blow; 
 Demurest of the tabby kind, 
 
 The pensive Selima reclin'd, 
 Gaz'd on the Lake below. 
 
20 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Her conscious tail her joy declared; 
 The fair round face, the snowy beard, 
 
 The velvet of her paws. 
 Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, 10 
 
 Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, 
 
 She saw; and purr'd applause. 
 
 Still had she gaz 'd ; but 'midst the tide 
 Two angel forms were seen to glide, 
 
 The Genii of the stream: 15 
 
 Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue, 
 Through richest purple to the view 
 
 Betray 'd a golden gleam. 
 
 The hapless Nymph with wonder saw : 
 
 A whisker first and then a claw, 20 
 
 With many an ardent wish. 
 She stretch 'd in vain to reach the prize. 
 What female heart can gold despise? 
 
 What Cat's averse to fish? 
 
 Presumptuous maid ! with looks intent 25 
 
 Again she stretch 'd, again she bent, 
 
 Nor knew the gulf between. 
 (Malignant Fate sat by, and smil'd.) 
 The slipp'ry verge her feet beguil'd, 
 
 She tumbled headlong in. 30 
 
 Eight times emerging from the Flood, 
 She mew 'd to ev 'ry wat 'ry God, 
 
 Some speedy aid to send. 
 No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirr'd: 
 Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard. 35 
 
 A fav'rite has no friend! 
 
 From hence, ye beauties, undeceiv'd, 
 Know, one false step is ne'er retriev'd, 
 
 And be with caution bold. 
 Not all that tempts your wand 'ring eyes 40 
 
 And heedless hearts, is lawful prize, 
 
 Nor all that glistens gold. 
 
lyrics from gray and his contemporaries 21 
 
 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 
 
 i 
 
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. 
 The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
 And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 
 
 ii 
 Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 5 
 
 And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 
 Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
 And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds : 
 
 m » 
 
 Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower 
 
 The moping owl does to the moon complain 10 
 
 Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
 
 Molest her ancient solitary reign. 
 
 IV 
 
 Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
 Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 15 
 
 The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 
 
 v 
 The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
 The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
 The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 20 
 
 VI 
 
 For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn 
 Or busy housewif e ply her evening care : 
 No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
 Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 
 
 VII 
 
 Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield 25 
 
 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 
 How jocund did they drive their team afield! 
 How bow 'd the woods beneath their sturdv stroke ! 
 
22 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 VIII 
 
 Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 
 
 Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 30 
 
 Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
 
 The short and simple annals of the poor. 
 
 IX 
 
 The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e 'er gave, 
 
 Awaits alike th' inevitable hour: — 35 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
 x 
 Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault 
 If memory o 'er their tomb no trophies raise, 
 Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault 
 The peeling anthem swells the note of praise. 40 
 
 xi . 
 Can storied urn or animated bust 
 Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? 
 Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, 
 Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death? 
 
 XII 
 
 Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 45 
 
 Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 
 Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
 Or waked to extasy the living lyre : 
 
 XIII 
 
 But knowledge to their eyes her ample page 
 
 Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; 50 
 
 Chill penury repress 'd their noble rage, 
 
 And froze the genial current of the soul. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Full many a gem of purest serene 
 
 The dark unf athom 'd caves of ocean bear : 
 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 55 
 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
 
 xv 
 Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
 The little tyrant of his fields withstood, 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 23 
 
 Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, — 
 
 Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. 60 
 
 XVI 
 
 Th' applause of listening senates to command, 
 The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 
 To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 
 And read their history in a nation's eyes. 
 
 xvn 
 Their lot forbad : nor circumscribed alone 65 
 
 Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ; 
 Forbad to wade thro' slaughter to a throne, 
 And shut the gates of mercy on mankind; 
 
 XVIII 
 
 The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
 
 To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 
 
 Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride 
 
 With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife 
 Their sober wishes never learn 'd to stray; 
 Along the cool sequester 'd vale of life 75 
 
 They kept the noiseless tenour of their way. 
 
 * xx 
 
 Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect 
 Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 
 With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, 
 Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 80 
 
 XXI 
 
 Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, 
 The place of fame and elegy supply: 
 And many a holy text around she strews, 
 That teach the rustic moralist to die. 
 
 XXII 
 
 For who, to dumb forgetfullness a prey, 85 
 
 This pleasing anxious being e 'er resign 'd, 
 Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
 Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind ? 
 
24 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 XXIII 
 
 On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 
 
 Some pious drops the closing eye requires; 90 
 
 E 'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
 
 E 'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 For thee, who, mindful of th 'unhonour 'd dead, 
 
 Dost in these lines their artless tale relate ; 
 
 If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 95 
 
 Some kindred spirit shall enquire their fate, — 
 
 xxv 
 
 Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
 
 "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 
 
 Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 
 
 To meet the sun upon the upland lawn ; 100 
 
 XXVI 
 
 "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech 
 That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 
 His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch, 
 And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 105 
 
 Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; 
 Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, 
 Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 "One morn I miss'd him on the customed hill, 
 
 Along the heath, and near his favourite tree ; 110 
 
 Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 
 
 Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he ; 
 
 XXIX 
 
 "The next with dirges due in sad array 
 Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne, — 
 Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 115 
 
 Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 
 
L : VI GRAY A; > HIS CONTEMPORARIES 25 
 
 The Epitaph 
 
 XXX 
 
 I! ore rests his head upon the lap of earth 
 A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown; 
 
 science frown'd not on his humble birth, 
 Avd melancholy marked him for her own. 120 
 
 XXXI 
 
 large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; 
 
 Heaven did a recompense as largely send: 
 
 * 3 gave to misery (all he had) a tear, 
 
 He gain'd from Heaven ('t was all he wish'd) a friend. 
 
 XXXII 
 
 No farther seek his merits to disclose, 125 
 
 draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
 (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) 
 i e bosom of his Father and his God. 
 
 The Bard 
 I. 1. Strophe 
 
 "Eiiin s< ze thee, ruthless King; 
 nfi ion thy banners wait; 
 fann' I Conquest 's crimson wing, 
 hey mock the air with idle state. 
 
 m, n hauberk's twisted mail, 5 
 
 e'en thy virtues. Tyrant, shall avail 
 save cret soul from nightly fears, 
 
 Ci I ;. > curse, from Cambria's tears!" 
 Mch ounds that o'er the crested pride 
 
 ■f th< first Edward scatter 'd wild dismay, 10 
 
 'ow h > of Snowdon's shaggy side 
 
 r e w with toilsome march his long array: — 
 
 'it G stood aghast in speechless trance; 
 
 i an ! ied Mortimer, and couch 'd his quivering 
 lance. 
 
 I. 2. Antistrophe 
 On a Lock, whose haughty brow 15 
 
 Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, 
 
26 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Eobed in the sable garb of woe 
 With haggard eyes the Poet stood; 
 (Loose his beard and hoary hair 
 
 Stream 'd like a meteor to the troubled air) 20 
 
 And with a master's hand and prophet's fire 
 Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre : 
 
 "Hark, how each giant-oak and desert-cave 
 Sighs to the torrent 's awful voice beneath ! 
 
 ? er thee,, oh King ! their hundred arms they wave,, 25 
 Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe ; 
 
 Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal clay. 
 
 To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay. 
 
 I. 3. Epode 
 
 "Cold is Caclwallo's tongue, 
 
 That hush'd the stormy main : 30 
 
 Brave L^rien sleeps upon his craggy bed : 
 
 Mountains, ye mourn in vain 
 
 Modred, whose magic song 
 Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head. 
 
 On dreary Arvoirs shore they lie 35 
 
 Smear 'cl with gore and ghastly pale: 
 Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail; 
 
 The famish 'd eagle screams, and passes by. 
 Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, 
 
 Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, 40 
 
 Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, 
 Ye died amidst your dying country's cries — 
 
 No more I weep. They clo not sleep. 
 On yonder cliffs, a griesly band, 
 
 1 see them sit, they linger yet, 45 
 
 Avengers of their native land : 
 With me in dreadful harmony they join, 
 And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line. 
 
 II. 1. Strophe 
 " 'Weave the warp and weave the ivoof 
 
 The winding sheet of Edward's race: 50 
 
 Give ample room and verge enough 
 
 The characters of hell to trace. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 27 
 
 Mark. the year, and mark the night, 
 
 When Severn shall re-echo ivith affright 
 
 The shrieks of death thro 9 Berkleys roof that ring, 55 
 
 Shrieks of an agonizing king! 
 
 She-wolf of France, ivith unrelenting fangs 
 That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, 
 
 From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs 
 The scourge of heaven! What terrors round him wait! 60 
 Amazement in his van, with flight combined, 
 And sorrow's faded form, and solitude behind. 
 
 II. 2. Antistrophe 
 
 " 'Mighty victor, mighty lord, 
 
 Low on his funeral couch he lies! 
 No pitying heart, no eye, afford • 65 
 
 A tear to grace his obsequies. 
 Is the sable warrior fled? 
 
 Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. 
 The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born? 
 — Gone to salute the rising morn. 70 
 
 Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 
 
 While proudly riding o'er the azure realm 
 In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes: 
 
 Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; 
 Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, 75 
 
 That hush'd in grim repose expects his evening prey. 
 
 II. 3. Epode 
 
 " 'Fill high the sparkling bowl, 
 The rich repast prepare; 
 
 Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: 
 Close by the regal chair 80 
 
 Fell Thirst and Famine scowl 
 
 A baleful smile upon their baffled guest, 
 Heard ye the din of battle bray, 
 
 Lance to lance, and horse to horse? 
 
 Long years of havock urge their destined course, 85 
 
 And thro' the kindred squadrons mow their way. 
 
 Ye toivers of Julius, London's lasting shame, 
 With many a foul and midnight murder fed, 
 
28 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, 
 And spare the meek usurper's holy head! 90 
 
 Above, below, the rose of snow, 
 
 Twined with her blushing foe, we spread: 
 The bristled boar in infant-gore 
 
 Wallows beneath the thorny sliade. 
 Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, 95 
 
 Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom. 
 
 III. 1. Strophe 
 " 'Edward, lo! to sudden fate 
 (Weave we the woof; the thread is spun;) 
 Half of thy heart we consecrate. 
 
 (The web is wove; The work is done.) 100 
 
 — Stay, oh stay ! nor thus forlorn 
 Leave me unbless 'd, unpitied, here to mourn : 
 In yon bright track that fires the western skies 
 They melt, they vanish from my eyes. 
 But oh ! what solemn scenes on Snowdon 's height 105 
 
 Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll? 
 Visions of glory, spare my aching sight, 
 Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! 
 No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail : — 
 All hail, ye genuine kings! Britannia's issue, hail! 110 
 
 III. 2. Antistrophe 
 
 ' ' Girt with many a baron bold 
 Sublime their starry fronts they rear ; 
 
 And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old 
 In bearded majesty, appear. 
 
 In the midst a form divine ! 115 
 
 Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line : 
 Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face 
 Attemper 'd sweet to virgin-grace. 
 What strings symphonious tremble in the air, 
 
 What strains of vocal transport round her play? 120 
 Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear ; 
 
 They breathe a soul to animate thy clay 
 Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings, 
 Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colour 'd wings. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 29 
 
 III. 3. Epode 
 
 "The verse adorn again 125 
 
 Fierce war, and faithful love, 
 And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest. 
 
 In buskin 'd measures move 
 Pale grief, and pleasing pain, 
 
 With horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. 130 
 
 A voice as of the cherub-choir 
 
 Gales from blooming Eden bear, 
 
 And distant warblings lessen on my ear* 
 That lost in long futurity expire. 
 Fond impious man, think 'st thou yon sanguine cloud 135 
 
 Raised by thy breath, has quench 'd the orb of day? 
 To-morrow he rapairs the golden flood 
 
 And warms the nations with redoubled ray. 
 Enough for me : with joy I see 
 
 The different doom our fates assign : 140 
 
 Be thine despair and sceptred care, 
 
 To triumph and to die are mine." 
 — He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height 
 Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. 
 
 Hymn to Adversity 
 
 Daughter of Jove, relentless power, 
 
 Thou tamer of the human breast, 
 Whose iron scourge and torturing hour 
 
 The bad affright, afflict the best ! 
 Bound in thy adamantine chain 5 
 
 The proud are taught to taste of pain, 
 And purple tyrants vainly groan 
 With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. 
 
 When first thy Sire to send on earth 
 
 Virtue, his darling child, design 'd, 10 
 
 To thee he gave the heavenly birth 
 
 And bade to form her infant mind. 
 Stern, rugged nurse ! thy rigid lore 
 With patienee many a year she bore ; 
 
30 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, 15' 
 
 And from her own she learn 'd to melt at others' woe. 
 
 Scared at thy frown terrific, fly 
 
 Self -pleasing Folly's idle brood, 
 Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, 
 
 And leave us 'leisure to be good. 20 
 
 Light they disperse, and with them go 
 The summer friend, the flattering foe ; 
 By vain Prosperity received, 
 To her they vow their truth, and are again believed. 
 
 Wisdom in sable garb array 'd 25 
 
 Immersed in rapturous thought profound, 
 
 And Melancholy, silent maid, 
 
 With leaden eye, that loves the ground, 
 
 Still on thy solemn steps attend : 
 
 Warm Charity, the general friend, 30 
 
 With Justice, to herself severe, 
 And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. 
 
 Oh! gently on thy suppliant's head 
 
 Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand! 
 
 Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, 35 
 
 Nor circled with the vengeful band 
 
 (As by the impious thou art seen) 
 
 With thundering voice, and threatening mien, 
 
 With screaming Horror's funeral cry, 
 Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty ; — 40 
 
 The form benign, oh goddess, wear, 
 
 Thy milder influence impart, 
 Thy philosophic train be there 
 
 To soften, not to wound my heart. 
 The generous spark extinct revive, • 45 
 
 Teach me to love and to forgive, 
 Exact my own defects to scan, 
 What others are to feel, and know myself a man. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 31 
 
 WILLIAM COLLINS 
 1721-1759 
 
 Collins was the son of a hatter of Chichester. He began 
 to write verses as a very young boy and continued the practice 
 during his school days at Winchester and during his years at 
 Oxford. While still at the University he published his Persian 
 Eclogues and the Epistle to Sir Thomas Hammer, both in the 
 manner of Pope. 
 
 He became discontented at Oxford, left the University 
 before he had taken his degree, and went up to London full 
 of great schemes. None of these schemes materialized, and 
 Collins, instead of facing life sanely and practically, aban- 
 doned himself to the reckless extravagance of a young blood 
 "on the town," and soon found himself hopelessly in debt. 
 
 But he did not at once bow to failure. In 1746, four years 
 after the publication of Gray's first poems and four years 
 before the final completion of the Elegy, Collins published his 
 Odes, Descriptive and Allegorical. This work was in part an 
 imitation of Gray's early poems and in part an anticipation 
 and possibly a model for his later work, more particularly his 
 odes. 
 
 Collins' odes to Fear, to Mercy and to Liberty are in the 
 same form and in the same classic style as Gray's Pindaric 
 Odes. Gray, perhaps, was a more assured master of the "pure, 
 perspicuous and musical" expression which was his ideal, yet 
 Collins' writing is so similar that in the field where the two 
 poets met he would pass almost for another Gray. Indeed, in 
 one quality common to both, namely, in the power of ex- 
 pressing quiet melancholy, Collins seems to be the superior. 
 
 But his Odes anticipating, as they did, the change of taste 
 effected by the Elegy, found a public unappreciative of their 
 delicate beauty and had only a small sale. In disgust and 
 bitterness Collins bought the unsold copies of the edition and 
 destroyed them. 
 
 Thereafter, he resumed at intervals his poetic labors, but 
 never with his former ardor. His only subsequent work equal 
 to the Odes is the beautiful elegy written in 1748 in honor of 
 his friend, the poet Thomson, beginning 
 
 In yonder grave a druid lies. 
 
32 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 In 1754, a protracted nervous affection culminated in a 
 violent attack of insanity that forced his temporary confine- 
 ment in an asylum. Later he was released and was taken to 
 the home of his sister in Chichester, where he remained until 
 his death in 1759. 
 
 Palgrave says of Collins, "We have no poet more marked 
 by rapture, by the ecstasy which Plato held the note of genuine 
 
 inspiration, than Collins His style .... was obscure; 
 
 his diction often harsh and unskilfully labored; he struggles 
 nobly against the narrow, artificial manner of his age, but his 
 too scanty years did not allow him to reach perfect mastery." 
 
 Andrew Lang refused to side with either Matthew Arnold 
 or with Swinburne in adjudging the relative merits of Gray 
 and Collins, but adds, "It may perhaps be said that Gray never 
 attains to the magical effect of Collins' How Sleep the Brave 
 and of the Ode to Evening. Each writer, at his best, was 
 truly a poet; neither, at his best, is staled or dimmed by time." 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 33 
 
 LYRICS BY COLLINS 
 
 Ode Written in 1746 
 
 How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, 
 
 By all their country's wishes blest! 
 
 When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, 
 
 Returns to deck their hallow 'd mould, 
 
 She there shall dress a sweeter sod 5 
 
 Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 
 
 By fairy hands their knell is rung, 
 By forms unseen their dirge is sung : 
 There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, 
 / To bless the turf that wraps their clay, 10 
 
 And Freedom shall awhile repair, 
 To dwell a weeping hermit there! 
 
 Ode to Evening 
 i 
 
 If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song 
 
 May hope, pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear 
 
 Like thy own solemn springs, 
 
 Thy springs, and dying gales ; 
 
 Nymph reserved, — while now the bright-hair 'd sun 5 
 Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, 
 
 With brede ethereal wove, 
 
 'erhang his wavy bed ; 
 
 Now air is hush 7 d, save where the weak-eyed bat 
 
 With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, 10 
 
 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 teach me, maid composed, 15 
 
 To breathe some soften 'd strain, 
 
 Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, 
 May not unseemly with its stillness suit ; 
 
34 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 As, musing slow, I hail 
 
 Thy genial loved return. 20 
 
 For when thy folding-star arising, shows 
 His paly circlet, at his warning lamp 
 
 The fragrant Hours, and Elves 
 
 Who slept in buds the day, 
 
 And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge 
 And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, 26 
 
 The pensive Pleasures sweet, 
 
 Prepare thy shadowy car. 
 
 Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene ; 
 
 Or find some ruin midst its dreary dells, 30 
 
 AYhose walls more awful nod 
 
 By thy religious gleams. 
 
 Or, if chill blustering winds or driving rain 
 Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut 
 
 That, from the mountain's side, 35 
 
 Views wilds, and swelling floods, 
 
 And hamlets brown, and dim-discover 'd spires; 
 And hears their simple bell ; and marks o 'er all 
 
 Thy dewy fingers draw 
 
 The gradual dusky veil. 40 
 
 While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, 
 And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve ! 
 
 While Summer loves to sport 
 . Beneath thy lingering light ; 
 
 While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves ; 45 
 
 Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, 
 
 Affrights thy shrinking train 
 
 And rudely rends thy robes ; 
 
 So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, 
 
 Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, 
 
 Thy gentlest influence own. 
 
 And love thv favourite name ! 
 
lyrics from gray and his contemporaries 35 
 
 Ode to Simplicity 
 
 Thou, by Nature taught 
 
 To breathe her genuine thought 
 In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong ; 
 
 Who first, on mountains wild, 
 
 In Fancy, loveliest child, 5 
 
 Thy babe, or Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song! 
 
 Thou, who with hermit heart, 
 
 Disdain 'st the wealth of art, 
 And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall, 
 
 But com'st, a decent maid 10 
 
 In Attic robe array 'd, 
 chaste, unboastful Nymph, to thee I call ! 
 
 By all the honey 'd store 
 
 On Hybla's thymy shore, 
 By all her blooms and mingled murmurs dear ; 15 
 
 By her whose love-lorn woe 
 
 In evening musings slow 
 Soothed sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear: 
 
 By old Cephisus deep, 
 
 Who spread his wavy sweep 20 
 
 In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat; 
 
 On whose enamelled side, 
 
 When holy Freedom died, 
 No equal haunt allured thy future feet : — 
 
 sister meek of Truth, 25 
 
 To my admiring youth 
 Thy sober aid and native charms infuse ! 
 
 The flowers that sweetest breathe, 
 
 Though Beauty culPd the wreath, 
 Still ask thy hand to range their order 'd hues. 30 
 
 While Rome could none esteem 
 But Virtue's patriot theme, 
 You loved her hills, and led her laureat band ; 
 But stay'd to sing alone 
 
36 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 To one distinguish 'd throne; 
 And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter 'd land. 35 
 
 No more, in hall or bower 
 
 The Passions own thy power; 
 Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean: 
 
 For thou hast left her shrine ; 40 
 
 Nor olive more, nor vine, 
 Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. 
 
 Though taste, though genius, bless 
 
 To some divine excess, 
 Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole ; 45 
 
 What each, what all supply 
 
 May court, may charm our eye ; 
 Thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul! 
 
 Of these let others ask 
 
 To aid some mighty task ; 50 
 
 I only seek to find thy temperate vale ; 
 
 Where oft my reed might sound 
 
 To maids and shepherds round, 
 And all thy sons, Nature ! learn my tale. 
 
 Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson 
 
 In yonder grave a Druid lies, 
 
 Where slowly winds the stealing wave ! 
 
 The year's best sweets shall duteous rise, 
 To deck its poet's sylvan grave! 
 
 In yon deep bed of whisp 'ring reeds, 5 
 
 His airy harp shall now be laid ; 
 That he, whose heart in sorrow bleeds, 
 
 May love through life the soothing shade. 
 
 Then maids and youths shall linger here 
 
 And while its sounds at distance swell, 10 
 
 Shall sadly seem in Pity's ear 
 To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 37 
 
 Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore 
 
 Where Thames in summer wreathes is drest ; 
 
 And oft suspend the dashing oar 15 
 
 To bid his gentle spirit rest ! 
 
 And oft as Ease and Health retire 
 
 To breezy lawn or forest deep, 
 The friend shall view yon whitening spire, 
 
 And 'mid the varied landscape weep. 20 
 
 But thou, who own'st that earthly bed, 
 
 Ah ! what will every dirge avail ! 
 Or tears which love and pity shed, 
 
 That mourn beneath the gliding sail! 
 
 Yet lives there one, whose heedless eye 25 
 
 Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimm 'ring near ? 
 
 With him, sweet bard, may Fancy die, 
 And Joy desert the blooming year. 
 
 But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide 
 
 No sedge-crowned sisters now attend, 30 
 
 Now waft me from the green hill's side, 
 
 Whose cold turf hides the buried friend ! 
 
 And see — the fairy valleys fade, 
 
 Dun Night has veiled the solemn view ! 
 
 Yet once again, dear parted shade, 35 
 
 Meek Nature 's child, again adieu ! 
 
 The genial meads assigned to bless 
 
 Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom ! 
 
 There hinds and shepherd girls shall dress 
 
 With simple hands thy rural tomb. 40 
 
 Long, long thy stone and pointed clay 
 
 Shall meet the musing Brition's eyes: 
 ' vales and wild woods ! ' shall he say, 
 
 1 In yonder grave your Druid lies ! ' 
 
38 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 
 1731-1800 
 
 William Cowper was born in 1731, the son of a country 
 clergyman. He was a boy of eleven when Gray wrote his first 
 poems, and a young man of twenty when the Elegy appeared. 
 How high was the opinion which he eventually formed of its 
 author we may guess from a letter written a few years after 
 Gray's death. "I have been reading Gray's works," he writes, 
 "and think him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the 
 character of sublime." 
 
 This superlative praise would seem to indicate a kinship of 
 spirit between the two poets. There is certainly a similarity 
 in the external features of their lives. Both were shy and 
 delicate schoolboys, both were destined for the law and hated 
 that profession cordially, both were invalids and spent the 
 greater part of their lives in retirement. 
 
 Yet the resemblance is, in truth, only external, for Gray's 
 malady was physical and Cowper's was mental. More signifi- 
 cant still, Gray had the comforting influence of his mother 
 until his mature age. Cowper lost his mother almost in in- 
 fancy, and finding that his father could not understand or 
 sympathize with him, was left quite alone in the world. 
 
 When his school days were over, Cowper was placed by his 
 father in a solicitor's office and later set to study law in the 
 Temple, London. There with many another unwilling victim 
 of paternal wisdom he made a pretense at fitting himself for 
 the bar, while he passed eight years in the pleasures of the 
 town and in light literary amusements. By this time his father 
 had died, and he began to cast about for an occupation more 
 congenial than the law. This seemed to present itself in 1762, 
 when Major Cowper, a kinsman, offered him the situation of 
 clerk of the journal of the house of lords. Cowper seized 
 the opportunity, but the examination which he had to pass 
 before entering upon his office so preyed upon his mind that 
 he was driven to melancholia, and finally to despair. He 
 resolved to commit suicide, which he attempted several times, 
 but was each time frustrated in his purpose either by adverse 
 circumstances or by his own irresolution at the last moment. 
 Finally, in trying to hang himself he fell, and thus attracted 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 39 
 
 the attention of a servant. Then sending for Major Cowper, 
 he surrendered his appointment and retired to a private asylum 
 for the insane. 
 
 Here he was so well cared for that after about two years 
 he was able to leave the asylum and was sent by his relatives 
 to live in the country in the town of Huntingdon, on the little 
 river Ouse. Here he met the Unwin family, with whom he 
 became so intimate that, when in 1767 Mr. Unwin died, 
 Cowper, at the dying man's request, took up his abode with 
 the family as one of its members. 
 
 Not long afterwards, Cowper fell in with the Rev. John 
 Newton, a man of deep religious feeling and a leader of the 
 Methodist movement which was then beginning. Under the 
 influence of Mr. Newton, Cowper composed many hymns, but 
 finally his religious excitement induced another attack of 
 lunacy. 
 
 In his malady he was tended by Mrs. Unwin. with the 
 utmost patience and tenderness, a fact to which he touchingly 
 alludes in the poems bearing her name. Under her devoted 
 care he once more regained his sanity and at her suggestion 
 took up verse-making as an occupation to relieve his habitual 
 melancholy. Thus Cowper, when nearly fifty, began the woik 
 which has won him a secure and honored position among the 
 poets. His subjects, suggested by Mrs. Unwin, were The Pro- 
 gress of Error, Truth, and Expostulation. As might be 
 imagined, such subjects failed to awaken the poet's genius 
 and were coldly received by the public. 
 
 Soon after, however, Cowper made the acquaintance of Lady 
 Austen, whose home was near the Unwinds. Her bright and 
 fascinating personality inspired Cowper to write his master- 
 piece, The Task, the nature of which may be guessed from the 
 titles of its several parts, viz., The Sofa, The Time-piece, The 
 Garden, The Winter Evening, The Winter Morning Walk, and 
 The Winter Walk at Noon. This poem reveals Cowper's 
 chief characteristic — the power to enter sympathetically into 
 the humbler affairs and the simpler feelings of life, and to 
 express these feelings with plain and realistic language, the 
 pathos of which is at times almost overpower in g. In such 
 expression he was somewhat hampered, especially in his earlier 
 works, inasmuch as the public taste still adhered to the stan- 
 dards of the age of Pope, but in his later works, especially 
 the lyric pieces, Cowper would seem to have anticipated 
 
40 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Wordsworth's dictum that the most poetical language was that 
 which most nearly approached the idiom of common speech. 
 
 Cowper followed up his poems by a translation of the Iliad 
 and the Odyssey. A crown pension was bestowed upon him 
 in 1790, but a few years later in 1796, just when it seemed 
 that his greatness had won recognition, Mrs. Unwin, who had 
 been the stay of his life, was taken from him by death. He 
 seemed unable to rally after this loss and spent the next yea>s 
 in alternating periods of lunacy and depression. How deep 
 was this latter we may learn from his last poem The Castaway. 
 
 Palgrave says, "There is much mannerism, much that is un- 
 important or of now exhausted interest in h : s poems: but 
 where he is great, it is with that elementary greatness which 
 rests on the most elementary human feelings. Cowper is our 
 highest master in simple pathos." 
 
 Southey called him the best of English letter-writers. 
 
 Perhaps the best criticism of Cowper is the eloquent tribute 
 of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the lines written at the 
 poet's grave: 
 
 poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless 
 
 singing ! 
 Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was 
 
 clinging ! 
 men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, 
 Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye 
 
 were smiling! 
 
 And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears 
 
 his story, 
 How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory, 
 And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights 
 
 departed, 
 He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted, 
 
 And wrought within his si altered brain such quick poetic- 
 senses 
 As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences: 
 The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number, 
 And silent shadows from the trees refreshed hira like a slum- 
 ber. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 41 
 
 LYRICS BY COWPER 
 
 On the Loss of the Royal George 
 
 Toll for the brave! 
 
 The brave that are no more! 
 All sunk beneath the wave, 
 
 Fast by their native shore! 
 
 Eight hundred of the brave, 5 
 
 "Whose courage well was tried, 
 Had made the vessel heel, 
 
 And laid her on her side. 
 
 A land breeze shook the shrouds, 
 
 And she was overset; 10 
 
 Down went the Royal George, 
 
 With all her crew complete. 
 
 Toll for the brave! 
 
 Brave Kempenfelt is gone; 
 His last sea-fight is fought; 15 
 
 His work of glory done. 
 
 It was not in the battle ; 
 
 No tempest gave the shock; 
 She sprang no fatal leak; 
 
 She ran upon no rock. 20 
 
 His sword was in its sheath ; 
 
 His fingers held the pen, 
 When Kempenfelt went down 
 
 With twice four hundred men. 
 
 Weigh the vessel up, 25 
 
 Once dreaded by our foes! 
 And mingle with our cup 
 
 The tear that England owes. 
 
 Her timbers yet are sound, 
 
 And she may float again 30 
 
42 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Full charged with England's thunder, 
 And plough the distant main. 
 
 But KempenMt is gone > 
 
 His victories are o'er; 
 And he and his eight hundred 35 
 
 Shall plough the waves no more. 
 
 The Poplar Field 
 
 The poplars are fell'd; farewell to the shade 
 And the whispering sound of the cool colonade ; 
 The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves, 
 Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. 
 
 Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view 5 
 Of my favorite field, and the bank where they grew : 
 And now in the grass behold they are laid, 
 And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade ! 
 
 The blackbird has fled to another retreat 
 AYhere the hazels afford him a screen from the heat; 10 
 And the scene where his melody charm 'd me before 
 Resounds with his sweet -flowing ditty no more. 
 
 My fugitive years are all hasting away, 
 
 And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, 
 
 AYith a turf on my breast and a stone at my head, 15 
 
 Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead. 
 
 The change both my heart and my fancy employs ; 
 I reflect on the frailty of man and his joys : 
 Short-lived as we are, yet our pleasures, we see, 
 Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we. 20 
 
 To Mary Unwin 
 
 Mary ! I want a lyre with other strings, 
 
 Such aid from Heaven as some have feign 'd they drew, 
 
 An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new 
 
 And unclebasecl by praise of meaner things, 
 
 That ere through age or woe I shed my wings 5 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 43 
 
 I may record thy worth with honour due, 
 
 In verse as musical as thou art true, 
 
 And that immortalizes whom it sings: — 
 
 But thou hast little need. There is a Book 
 
 By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, 10 
 
 On which the eyes of God not rarely look, 
 
 A chronicle of actions just and bright — 
 
 There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine ; 
 
 And since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine. 
 
 To the Same 
 
 The twentieth year is well-nigh past 
 Since first our sky was overcast; 
 Ah would that this might be the last ! 
 My Mary! 
 
 Thy spirits have a fainter flow, 5 
 
 I see thee daily weaker grow — 
 'T was my distress that brought thee low, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Thy needles, once a shining store, 
 For my sake restless heretofore, 10 
 
 Now rust disused, and shine no more ; 
 My Mary ! 
 
 For though thou gladly wouldst fulfill 
 The same kind office for me still, 
 Thy sight now seconds not thy will, 15 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 But well thou play'dst the housewife's part, 
 And all thy threads with magic art 
 Have wound themselves about this heart, 
 
 My Mary! 20 
 
 Thy indistinct expressions seem 
 Like language utter 'd in a dream; 
 Yet me they charm, what'er the theme, 
 My Mary ! 
 
44 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 25 
 
 Are still more lovely in my sight 
 Than golden beams of orient light, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 For could I view nor them nor thee, 
 
 What sight worth seeing could I see? 30 
 
 The sun would rise in vain for me, 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 • 
 
 Partakers of thy sad decline 
 Thy hands their little force resign ; 
 Yet, gently prest, press gently mine, 35 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Such feebleness of limbs thou prov'st 
 That now at every step thou mov'st 
 Upheld by two; yet still thou lov'st, 
 
 My Mary ! 40 
 
 And still to love, though prest with ill, 
 In wintry age to feel no chill, 
 With me is to be lovely still, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 But ah ! by constant heed I know 45 
 
 How oft the sadness that I show 
 Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 And should my future lot be cast 
 With much resemblance of the past, 50 
 
 Thy worn-out heart will break at last — 
 My Mary ! 
 
 On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture 
 
 That those lips had language! Life has pass'd 
 With me but roughly since I heard thee last. 
 Those lips are thine — thy own sweet smile I see, 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY \\D MIS CONTEMPORARIES 45 
 
 The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; 
 Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, 5 
 
 "Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!" 
 The meek intelligence of those dear eyes 
 (Blest be the art that can immortalize, 
 The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim 
 To quench it!) here shines on me still the same. 10 
 
 Faithful remembrancer of one so dear, 
 
 welcome guest, though unexpected here ! 
 Who bidst me honour with an artless song, 
 Affectionate, a mother lost so long, 
 
 1 will obey, not willingly alone, 15 
 But gladly, as the precept w r ere her own : 
 
 And, while that face renews my filial grief, 
 
 Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief, 
 
 Shall steep me in Elysian reverie, 
 
 A momentary dream, that thou are she. 20 
 
 My mother ! when I learn 'd that thou wast dead, 
 Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? 
 Hover 'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
 Wretch even then, life's journey just begun? 
 Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss ; 25 
 
 Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
 Ah, that maternal smile ! it answers — Yes. 
 I heard the bell toll 'd on thy burial day, 
 I saw r the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
 And, turning from my nursery window, drew 30 
 
 A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
 But was it such ? — It was. — Where thou art gone 
 Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
 May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
 The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! 35 
 
 Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern ! 
 Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. 
 What ardently I wish'd, I long believed, 
 And, disappointed still, was still deceived. 
 By expectation every day beguiled, 40 
 
 Dupe of tomorrow even from a child. 
 
46 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Thus many a sad tomorrow came and went, 
 
 Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 
 
 I learn 'd at last submission to my lot, 
 
 But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. 45 
 
 "Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, 
 Children not thine have trod my nursery floor ; 
 And, where the gardener Robin, day by day, 
 Drew me to school along the public way, 
 Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt 50 
 
 In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped, 
 Tis now become a history little known, 
 That once we called the pastoral house our own. 
 Short lived possession ! but the record fair, 
 That memory keeps of all thy kindness there, 55 
 
 Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced 
 A thousand other themes less deeply traced. 
 Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, 
 That thou might 'st know me safe and warmly laid; 
 Thy morning bounties, ere I left my home, 60 
 
 The biscuit or confectionery plum ; 
 The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed 
 By thy own hand till fresh they shone and glowed ; 
 All this and more endearing still than all, 
 Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, 65 
 
 Ne 'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks, 
 That humor interposed too often makes. 
 All this still legible in memory's page, 
 And still to be so to my latest age, 
 
 Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay 70 
 
 Such honors to thee as my numbers may; 
 Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, 
 Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here. 
 
 Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, 
 When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, 75 
 
 The vioiet, the pink, and jessamine, 
 1 pricked them into paper with a pin 
 (And thou wast happier than myself the while, 
 Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head, and smile) — 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 47 
 
 Could those few pleasant hours again appear, 80 
 
 Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here? 
 
 I would not trust my heart — the dear delight 
 
 Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might. 
 
 But no — what here we call our life is such, 
 
 So little to be loved, and thou so much, 85 
 
 That I should ill requite thee to constrain 
 
 Thy unbound spirit into bonds again. 
 
 Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast, 
 (The storms all weather 'd and the ocean cross 'd) 
 Shoots into port at some well-haven 'd isle, 90 
 
 Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile, 
 There sits quiescent on the floods, that show 
 Her beauteous form reflected clear below, 
 While airs impregnated with incense play 
 Around her, fanning light her streamers gay ; 95 
 
 So thou, with sails how swift! hast reach 'd the shore, 
 "Where tempests never beat nor billows roar;' 7 
 And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide 
 Of life long since has anchor 'd by thy side. 
 But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, 100 
 
 Always from port withheld, always distress 'd — 
 Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-toss 'd, 
 Sails ripp'd, seams opening wide, and compass lost, 
 And day by day some current's thwarting force 
 Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. 105 
 
 Yet oh, the thought, that thou art safe, and he! 
 That thought is joy, arrive what may to me. 
 My boast is not that I deduce my birth 
 From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth ; 
 But higher far my proud pretensions rise — 110 
 
 The son of parents pass'd into the skies. 
 
 And now, farewell! Time unrevoked has run 
 His wonted course, yet what I wish'd is done. 
 By contemplation 's help, not sought in vain, 
 I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again; 115 
 
 To have renew 'd the joys that once were mine, 
 Without the sin of violating thine; 
 
48 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 And, while the wings of fancy still are free, 
 
 And I can view this mimic show of thee, 
 
 Time has but half succeeded in his theft, — 120 
 
 Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left. 
 
 The Castaway 
 
 Obscurest night involved the sky, 
 
 The Atlantic billows roared, 
 When such a destin'd wretch as I, 
 
 Wash'd headlong from on board, 
 Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 5 
 
 His floating home forever left. 
 
 No braver chief could Albion boast 
 
 Than he with whom he went, 
 Nor ever ship left Albion's coast 
 
 With warmer wishes sent. 10 
 
 He loved them both, but both in vain, 
 Nor him beheld, nor her again. 
 
 Not long beneath the whelming brine, 
 
 Expert to swim, he lay; 
 Nor soon he felt his strength decline, 15 
 
 Or courage die away; 
 But waged with death a lasting strife 
 Supported by despair of life. 
 
 He shouted : nor his friends had failed 
 
 To check the vessel's course, 20 
 
 But so the furious blast prevailed, 
 That, pitiless perforce, 
 
 They left their outcast mate behind, 
 
 And scudded still before the wind. 
 
 Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he 25 
 
 Their haste himself condemn, 
 Aware their flight in such a sea 
 
 Alone could rescue them ; 
 Yet bitter felt it still to die 
 Deserted and his friends so nigh. 30 
 
LYRICS fro: gray and his contemporaries 49 
 
 At length, his transient respite past, 
 
 His conrades who before 
 Had heard his voice in every blast, 
 
 Could ratch the sound no more;; 
 For then, oy toil subdued, he drank 35 
 
 The stifling wave, and then he sank. 
 
 No poet wept him, but the page 
 
 Of narrative sincere, 
 That tells his name, his worth, his age, 
 
 Is wet with Anson 's tear ; 40 
 
 And tears by bard or hero shed 
 Alike immortalize the dead. 
 
 I therefore purpose not, or dream, 
 
 Descanting on his fate, 
 To give the melancholy theme 45 
 
 A more enduring date : 
 But misery still delights to trace 
 Its semblance in another's case. 
 
 No voice divine the storm allay 'd, 
 
 No light propitious shone, 50 
 
 When snatched from all effectual aid, 
 
 We perished, each alone : 
 But I beneath a rougher sea, 
 And whelm 'd in deeper gulfs than he. 
 
50 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 JAMES THOMSON 
 1700-1748 
 
 Thomson was born in 1700 at Ednaru, a border town of 
 Scotland. He studied at the University of Edinburgh in a 
 somewhat listless fashion, and seems to have found less attrac- 
 tion in his books than in the sights and sounds of lowland 
 country life. 
 
 In 1725 he came to London with good letters of introduction 
 and with the manuscript of a nature poem called Winter. 
 Thomson's letters secured the interest of powerful friends who 
 brought his poem prominently before the public. Although 
 at that hour Pope and his style completely dominated Eng- 
 lish literature, the popularity of Winter was instant and 
 enormous. 
 
 Thomson's ponderosities and his mannerisms were quite over- 
 looked in that artificial age and possibly enhanced the delight 
 felt in his keen observation of nature, in his sympathy with 
 all that is charming in her sights and sounds, and in the 
 melodious roll of his easy blank verse. 
 
 Thomson followed Winter by Summer, Spring and Autumn, 
 which are rather of inferior quality. He is at his best again 
 in the Castle of Indolence, which is written with a thorough 
 love of the subject. 
 
 "A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, 
 Of dreams that wave before the half -shut eye; 
 And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
 Forever Hushing round a summer sky." 
 
 After these achievements, Thomson probably . felt that he 
 had expressed himself fully. Hazlitt has preserved an anecdote 
 which reports that one Dr. Burney found Thomson late in bed 
 and asked why he had not risen earlier. The bard wisely 
 answered, "I had no motive, young man." 
 
 Thomson, sure of a living from the favor won for him by 
 the Seasons, had little motive for working the rich lyric vein 
 of which he was possessed. The surprising vigor of Rule, 
 Brittania was inspired by a Spanish attempt to challenge 
 England's newly won supremacy of the seas. His other lyrics 
 seem to have been "occasional verses" or polite trifles which 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 51 
 
 cost him little effort. The short piece To Fortune is perhaps 
 "the best of them. 
 
 Thomson closed his lazy, good-natured life in 1748. Before 
 his death he had the pleasure of seeing himself idealized in 
 this stanza written in his own manner by his friend, Lord 
 Lyttleton : 
 
 "A bard here dwelt more fat than bard beseems; 
 Who void of envy, guile, and lust of gain, 
 On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes, 
 Pour'd forth his unpremeditated strain; 
 The world forsaking with a calm disdain, 
 Here laugh' d he careless in his easy seat; 
 Here quaff 'd, encircled with the joyous train, 
 Oft moralizing sage: his ditty sweet 
 He loathed much to write, ne cared to repeat." 
 
52 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 LYRICS BY THOMSON 
 
 10 
 
 Rule, Britannia 
 
 When Britain first at Heaven's command 
 
 Arose from out the azure main, 
 This was the charter of her land, 
 
 And guardian angels sung the strain : 
 Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! 
 
 Britons never shall be slaves. 
 
 The nations not so blest as thee 
 
 Must in their turn to tyrants fall, 
 Whilst thou shalt flourish great and free 
 
 The dread and envy of them all. 
 
 Still more majestic shalt thou rise, 
 
 More dreadful from each foreign stroke; 
 
 As the loud blast that tears the skies 
 Serves but to root thy native oak. 
 
 Thee haughty tyrants ne 'er shall tame ; 
 
 All their attempts to bend thee down 
 Will but arouse thy generous flame, 
 
 And work their woe and thy renown. 
 
 To thee belongs the rural reign ; 
 
 Thy cities shall with commerce shine ; 
 All thine shall be the subject main, 
 
 And every shore it circles thine ! 
 
 The Muses, still with Freedom found, 
 
 Shall to thy happy coast repair ; 
 Blest Isle, with matchless beauty crown 'd 25 
 
 And manly hearts to guard the fair:— 
 Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! 
 
 Britons never shall be slaves ! 
 
 15 
 
 20 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 53 
 
 To Fortune 
 
 For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove 
 An unrelenting foe to Love, 
 And when we meet a mutual heart 
 Come in between ,and bid us part ? 
 
 Bid us sigh on from day to day, 5 
 
 And wish and wish the soul away ; 
 Till youth and genial years are flown, 
 And all the life of life is gone ? 
 
 But busy, busy, still art thou, 
 
 To bind the loveless, joyless vow, 10 
 
 The heart from pleasure to delude, 
 
 To join the gentle to the rude. 
 
 For once, Fortune, hear my prayer, 
 
 And I absolve thy future care; 
 
 All other blessings I resign, 15 
 
 Make but the dear Amanda mine. 
 
54 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 NOTES ON LYRICS BY GRAY 
 Ode On The Spring 
 
 This ode was the first poem which Gray published. Its 
 original title was Solitude. Neither title tells much of the 
 nature of the poem. Perhaps you could suggest one that does. 
 
 In the first stanza Gray tells us that it is Spring. In the 
 second he announces that he and the muse will sit and moralize. 
 Then he observes that the insects which people the air afford 
 an apt parallel to human beings, and concludes with playful 
 raillery at his own moralizings. 
 
 Line 
 1 Rosy bosom 'd Hours: The phrase is borrowed from Milton, 
 who took the idea from the ancients. The Horae, or hours, 
 according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses of the 
 seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented 
 by "the dance of the hours." 
 
 4 Purple Year: Another classic phrase: Purpureas to Virgil 
 probably meant bright, or as Shelley would say, Radiant. 
 
 5 Attic warbler: the nightingale; so called by Ovid, Proper- 
 tins and Milton. Cf. Collins' Ode to Simplicity, 1. 16. 
 Pours her throat : What figure ? 
 
 8-9-10 (Zephyrs) whispering as they fly, fling: — is the meta- 
 phor perfectly clear, natural and effective? 
 
 15-20 This is a favorite idea with Gray, one that was to receive 
 a noble development in the Elegy. 
 
 23 Peopled air: Peopled with what? The thought is developed 
 in the next six lines, which may serve to teach the pupil the 
 true nature and importance of development in composition. 
 
 27 Liquid noon: imitated from Virgil's "liquidam aestatem." 
 What does it mean? Do you admire either phrase? Why? 
 
 31-40 This is the application of his parallel. How are we re- 
 minded of this by the choice of words ? 
 
 41-50 If you had written the poem would you have added this 
 last stanza? Give a reason for your answer. 
 
 Exercise : Compose a parallel between the race of men and a 
 swarm of ants, or a drove of deer, or a band of children at 
 play. 
 
 Gray has five instances of personification in his poem. 
 Locate them. Use at least three in vour exercise. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 55 
 
 Ode on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude 
 
 The Theme : Spring has returned, the plants are growing, 
 beasts and birds give vent to their pleasure. But such crea- 
 tures live only for the present; man alone can remember his 
 past pleasures and hope for relief after misfortune. A sufferer 
 rejoices in his regained strength. 
 
 LlXE 
 
 1-8 In this stanza Morn and Spring and April appear as 
 concrete figures. Morn is pictured most definitely — a re- 
 splendent, winged, red cheeked maiden wooing in soft 
 whispers her belated lover, Spring, who is possibly to be 
 identified with April. What is this figure called"? How is it 
 employed in stanzas 4 and 5 ? 
 
 9-1G Why does the poet express his ideas more forcibly in 
 this stanza than he would by remarking, "Beasts and birds 
 manifest high spirits"? 
 
 Compare with this stanza Mrs. Browning's lines: 
 The young lambs are bleating in the meadows : 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest; 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows, 
 The young flowers are blowing toward the west — 
 But the young, young, children, my brothers, 
 
 They are weeping bitterly ! — 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 In the country of the free. 
 
 Do you think this is more or less forceful than Gray's 
 stanza? Why? Does its passionate language help you to 
 understand Matthew Arnold's saying of Gray that "he 
 never spoke out in poetry" ? 
 
 Xote the phrases liquid light, raptures flow. What 
 exactly are the ideas denoted by these phrases? What 
 images do they suggest not directly denoted by the words? 
 What figure is this? 
 
 Study carefully the last half of stanzas 4 and 5. Do you 
 find another example of the figure just referred to? Why 
 is the one in 5 somewhat complicated? 
 17-24 How could the turn of the thought, the contrast of 
 man with beasts be more strongly emphasized? 
 Do you admire the way in which he expresses "past and 
 
 future?" 
 
56 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 25-40 Do you think that in these two stanzas Gray quite 
 clearly and convincingly expounds his theme: that hope 
 and remembrance comfort man in his distress? Give a 
 reason for your answer. Name the figures in these two 
 stanzas. 
 
 41-48 Show w^hat connection this stanza has with the preced- 
 ing. Count the figures in the first four lines, — in the last 
 four. Which lines do you consider the best of the poem? 
 Why? Write a sketch on The Sorrows of Vicissitude. 
 
 The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College 
 
 This is one of Gray's earlier works, composed shortly after 
 he had left the University. He returns to Windsor, from 
 whose "stately heights" he catches a glimpse of Eton and the 
 country in which he had spent his happy school days. But 
 another generation of boys is there. His eye cannot help 
 gazing into the future and seeing in most tangible shape the 
 evils which will assail, probably overcome, these "little vic- 
 tims." At last, seeing no other remedy the poet turns away 
 with the Cui bono of the indifferentist. "Why borrow trouble 
 from the future, why bring the bitterness of tomorrow to 
 poison the fresh waters of today?" 
 
 This is no very heroic or justly proportioned view of life. 
 
 It is rather the expression of a mood. Is anything of Gray's 
 
 character revealed by the fact that he rests in this view, 
 
 though he repudiated that expressed in the Ode on the Spring? 
 
 Line 
 
 1 Ye distant spires, etc : The vocatives are introductory to 
 
 the sentence beginning in line 15, I feel. Are Spires and 
 
 Towers really different or did Gray wish only to have a 
 
 "full resounding line"? 
 
 What is the view-point at which we are expected to stand? 
 Are the images presented throughout the poem consistent 
 with this view-point? For example is watery the proper 
 adjective to use for the valley as it appeared from a neigh- 
 boring height? 
 4 Henry's holy shade: The college was founded by King 
 Henry VI in 1440. In Hall's Chronicles we read: "King 
 Henry the Sixth was of a liberal mind, and especially to 
 such as loved good learning; . . . wherefore he first holpe 
 his young scholars to attain to discipline, and for them he 
 founded a solemn school at Eton, a town next unto Winsor." 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 57 
 
 9 Hoary Thames: of line 21, The river is personified as an 
 aged God according to the common classic ideas. 
 
 12 Belov'd in vain: Why did Gray think of this rather odd 
 phrase? See Virgil's Aeneid, Bk. II, line 405, 
 ad coelum tendens ardentia lumina frustra, 
 or Horace's Odes, Bk. Ill, Ode 13 line 6. 
 
 17-20 A rather elaborate metaphor. Try to express the com- 
 plete image in other words. Of the phrases, gladsome 
 wing, redolent of joy and youth, second spring, which 
 do you think is the finest? Why? 
 
 21-30 What do you think of Gray's taste in adopting the 
 grand style in this stanza? Was there any alternative? 
 (Read numbers II-XII. Cf. Golden Treasury, second 
 series. ) 
 
 47 Sunshine of the breast : Criticise this figure from its effect 
 on you. 
 
 55-90 Try to visualize each image in this very vivid passage. 
 
 82 Griesly: Horrible. 
 
 Exercise: Taking your stand in a tower overlooking your 
 school yard, imagine you see the glory and the happiness 
 which awaits boys of strong and noble character ; or predict 
 the sorrows of a herd of young horses, once they have been 
 broken and put to farm or dray work. 
 
 On a Favourite Cat 
 
 The occasion for the composition of this ode is referred to 
 by Gray in a letter to his friend Walpole, dated March 1, 
 1747. "As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid 
 blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible 
 satisfaction to me — to know for certain who it is I lament. I 
 knew Zara and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima?) or rather 
 I knew them both together; for I cannot justly say I knew 
 which was which. . . Till this affair is a little better deter- 
 mined you will excuse me if I do not begin to cry. 
 
 Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque doloris. . . 
 I am about to immortalize (Mademoiselle Selime) for one 
 week or fortnight, as follows": (The ode follows here.) 
 
 At the end Gray writes: "There's a poem for you, it is 
 rather too long for an Epitaph." 
 
 This poem belongs to a class of compositions called mock- 
 heroic. It treats a trifle as though it were an affair of great 
 importance. The successful treatment of this humorous type 
 
58 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 demands that the most unimportant details be as strongly 
 emphasized and as fully elaborated as major events in epics. 
 
 Lixe 
 3 The azure flowers that. blow: The last two words of this 
 line have set most of the critics' teeth on edge. Why are 
 they objectionable? 
 
 5 reclin'd: a participle, not a finite verb. 
 
 6 lake: mock-heroic. 
 
 7 Her conscious tail: Aeneid 11-267, agmina conscia inn- 
 gunt. 
 
 11 Angel: originally read "beateous." Do you approve of the 
 change ? 
 
 16 Tyrian hue: explained by next line. 
 
 20 A whisker etc: whisker and claw are objects of the 
 stretched in line 22. The mock-heroic element is delicately 
 brought out in the juxtaposition of nymph and whisker. 
 
 31 Why eight? 
 
 34 Dolphin: an illusion to the story of Arion, a Greek poet 
 who leapt into the sea to escape the hands of pirates. He 
 was rescued and conveyed to land by a dolphin. 
 Nereid : sea-nymph. 
 
 37-42 Do you think the moral is in harmony with the tone 
 of the whole piece ? 
 
 Exercise: Write a mock-heroic description of your terriers 
 first encounter with a cat. Mrs. Snodgrass breaks off dip- 
 lomatic relations. 
 
 The Elegy written in a Country Church Yard 
 
 This is Gray's masterpiece and probably the most famous 
 short poem in English. Its popularity is traceable to two dis- 
 tinct causes. The first is the human interest of the theme, 
 tvhich deals with a phase of life in which we must all feel 
 concern. "This no doubt is one of the chief praises of Gra} 7 , 
 as of other poets," says Lowell, "that he is the voice of emo- 
 tions common to all mankind. 'Tell me what I feeP is what 
 everybody asks of the poet. . . . The commonplace is unhap- 
 pily wtihm reach of us all, and unhappily too, they are rare 
 who can give it novelty, and even invest it with a kind of 
 grandeur as Gray knew how to do. He, if any, had certainly 
 the art to please. 77 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 59 
 
 The second reason for the popularity of the Elegy is the 
 remarkable elegance and smoothress of its diction and the 
 artistic perfection or "evolution" of its form. To quote Lowell 
 again, "Gray's great claim to the rank he holds is derived from 
 his almost unrivalled skill as an artist in words and sounds; 
 as an artist, too, who knew how to compose his thoughts and 
 images with a thorough knowledge of perspective. 
 
 "This explains why he is so easy to remember; why, though 
 he wrote so little, so much of what he wrote is familiar on 
 Men's tongues. . . . Gray's phrases have the gift of hooking 
 themselves into the memory . . . due to the exquisite artifice 
 of their construction." 
 
 The student who would like to have a better acquaintance 
 with Gray himself would do well to read the first essay in 
 Lowell's Latest Literary Essays and Addresses and Matthew 
 Arnold's introduction to Gray's poems in Ward's English 
 Poets, Vol. III. Both of these papers are extremely interesting 
 and exhibit modern criticism at its best. 
 
 The Theme 
 
 In the souls of many obscure country folk are great possi- 
 bilities both for good and for evil. These persons die unknown, 
 but, viewed in the face of death, that is a most unimportant 
 fact. 
 
 Stanzas 1-4. The Setting. Stoke Church Yard. 
 
 The feeling of this passage is pensive melancholy inspired 
 by the Solemn Stillness of the landscape. How is this feeling 
 expressed, — or is it rather suggested? Of the images, some are 
 suggested, e. g., parting day, and some are expressed out onty 
 by a few graphic strokes, e. g., the plough-man. How well this 
 is done may be seen by trying to express in other words the 
 complete picture in stanza III. 
 
 Weigh each word in stanza IV, considering what each con- 
 tributes to the effect of the stanza by description or suggestion, 
 e. g., rude instead of poor, hardy, uncouth. 
 
 Line 
 1-3 Discuss the aptness of the verbs tails, wind and plod. 
 5-9 How does the sound of these lines help to convey the 
 impression Gray wished to produce? 
 13-16 He thinks only of the poor, because the rich are buried 
 within the Church. 
 
60 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Stanzas 5-7. In death these country folk no longer know 
 their joys and duties. 
 
 The feeling is sympathy. It is very quiet and is just discern- 
 ible through the nice care evident in the author's treatment. 
 
 Every verse in these three stanzas outlines or suggests a very 
 definite and interesting image. 
 
 Line 
 
 17 Incense-breathing morn: This seems to contain a double 
 suggestion 
 
 a) a classical personification; 
 
 b) a direct allusion to the fragrant fields or gardens. 
 
 19 shriir clarion, echoing horn. Note the aptness of these 
 adjectives. What do the phrases suggest to you? 
 
 20 Their lowly bed of course has no reference to the grave- 
 yard. 
 
 Stanzas 8-11. But men of rank are in reality no more 
 fortunate. 
 
 The feeling is a lofty earnestness which expresses itself in 
 the eloquence of the passage, e. g., in the long, sweeping 
 cadences, the suspense and the repetition of the rhetorical 
 questions. 
 
 39^t0 By what details does he suggest all the pomp and cere- 
 mony of a state funeral? 
 
 A fret is an ornament used in architecture. It is formed 
 by two small fillets intersecting at right angles. 
 41-44 What details are used to suggest the tombs of the 
 wealthy? Are they sufficient? 
 
 Provoke: from what two Latin words? Is the word used 
 here in its usual English sense? 
 
 44 Shakespere said, and sleep in dull, cold marble. Henry 
 VIII, III, 2. 
 Stanzas 12-16. The secluded life of these lowly folk, not 
 their lack of natural gifts explains the fact that they remained 
 unknown. 
 
 The feeling in this passage seems to be sympathy. It is not 
 displayed openly, but rather betrays itself by the words which 
 Gray chooses. For example, an unsympathetic person might 
 have said Some Poet rather than Some heart once pregnant 
 with celestial fire. 
 
 Note that the two gifts mentioned in stanza 12 are developed 
 in the succeeding stanzas. 
 
lyrics from gray and his contemporaries 61 
 
 Line 
 
 52 genial: life giving. 
 
 60 In an early form of his poem, Gray wrote : 
 
 "Some village Cato, who, with dauntless breast 
 The little Tyrant of his fields withstood, 
 Some mute inglorious Tully here may *rest, 
 Some Caesar guiltless of his country's blood." 
 Gray was a scholar and as such he stepped into this form 
 naturally. Do you think it fits in harmoniously with the 
 thought and general tenor of the poem? Why do you think 
 Gray later made the change? 
 
 Hampden was a merchant who opposed the tyrannous ship- 
 bill of Charles I. 
 
 Stanzas 17-19. This seclusion likewise circumscribed their 
 possibilities for wrong-doing. 
 
 The feeling in this passage also is sympathy. Do you think 
 there is any f alling-off, or is the feeling at the same high pitch 
 as in the preceding stanzas? How could you judge? 
 Line 
 
 65 What is the subject of circumscribed f 
 
 Gray's instructions to his first printer specified that no 
 interval should be left between the stanzas. This arrange- 
 ment might harm the rest of the poem but would certainly 
 help it here. 
 
 66 Their growing virtues, i. e., the growth of their virtues. 
 See note on line 67. 
 
 67 What is the subject of this second forbade? 
 
 Wade through slaughter, what word did Gray have in 
 mind when he wrote "slaughter"? This phrase is an ex- 
 ample of what is called Virgilian artificiality. See page 6 
 of the introduction, or Nettleship's "Virgil," pages 78-81. 
 
 68 The gates of Mercy: Cf. Shakespere. Henry V, III, 3. 
 
 The gates of mercy shall be all shut up. 
 72 The following stanzas originally appeared here: 
 The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow, 
 Exalt the brave, and idolize success ; 
 But more to innocence their safety owe, 
 Than Pow'r, or Genius, e'er conspired to bless. 
 And thou, who mindful of th' unhonoured Dead, 
 Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, 
 By night and lonely contemplation led 
 To wander in the gloomy walks of fate : 
 
62 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Hark! how the sacred Calm, that breathes around 
 
 Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease; 
 
 In still small accents whispering from the ground, 
 
 A grateful earnest of eternal peace. 
 
 No more, with reason and thyself at strife, 
 
 Give anxious cares and endless wishes room; 
 
 But through the cool sequestered value of life 
 
 Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom. 
 
 And thus the elegy ended. The poem has gained much by the 
 addition of the verses which now form the conclusion, in other 
 words, by the development which, after more mature delibera- 
 tion, Gray gave to his ideas. The original stanzas were simply 
 the recording of an impression and the statement of the 
 "moral." The poeru as it now stands is a progression from 
 the most general commonplace to a very particular and 
 pathetic application of it. 
 
 These stanzas may serve to illustrate two peculiarities of 
 Gray's method of composition. First, he seems to have been 
 a very slow worker. He was nearly eight years writing the 
 Elegy. Secondly, he polished the verses as they left his pen, 
 as we are told Virgil was wont to do. This habit, of course, 
 was partly responsible for the slow growth of his work. Gray 
 seems to have considered an apt or picturesque or musical 
 phrase as a thing of beauty in itself. Thus we find that many 
 of the phrases which occur in these rejected stanzas are used 
 in those which were substituted. It will be well for the student 
 to ponder over them and study their effect in either context. 
 
 Lixe 
 
 75 Sequestered-separate-set apart, 
 
 76 Tencr (from the Latin word signifying to hold) : The hold- 
 ing on, the continued course. 
 
 Stanzas 20-23. Yet even the obscure are remembered here 
 by their simple epitaphs. 
 
 The pathos of this passage is deeper than that of the pre- 
 ceding. But, as before, the feeling is not expressed directly. 
 We are left to perceive the sympathetic attitude of the writer 
 from the adjectives and the figures which he employs. 
 
 An example of this pathos is frail memorial, an epithet 
 which is also remarkably apt for its descriptive power, so like- 
 wise uncouth rhymes, shapeless sculpture, passing tribute. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 63 
 
 Line 
 
 85 There are two interpretations of this stanza : 
 
 1st — Who, yielding himself up a prey to Forgetfulness, 
 
 ever died without regret? 
 2nd — Who ever resigned his life to be the prev of Forget- 
 fulness without feeling some regret? 
 It would be unwise to debate the precise meaning of the 
 words which are, in fact, ambiguous, (could the same be 
 said of line 6?) 
 
 85 Pleasing, anxious being. 
 
 86 warm precincts of the cheerful day. Why is this phrase 
 an apt description of life as contrasted with the moment of 
 death? 
 
 89 Parting: as in line 1 means "departing." 
 
 90 Pious drops: Pious is here used- in the sense of the Latin 
 pius, that is, it denotes the devotion that should exist be- 
 tween members of a family. 
 
 The phrase as it stands is another example of Virgilian 
 artificiality. Cf. note on line 67. Ovid has piae lacrymae. 
 
 Stanza 24. — End the poet foresees his own death and his 
 own epitaph. 
 
 Note the connection of thought. Gray has just risen from a 
 contemplation of the rude headstones in the graveyard to a 
 reflection upon a common trait and fundamental instinct of 
 mankind. Then the suggestion comes, "So I, too, see my fate 
 here revealed in the common fate of all. How, then, shall my 
 grave appear?" The feeling is deeper and more personal than 
 in any other passage in the poem. 
 
 Why are we justified in saying that the feeling is deeper? 
 Why is it fitting that it should be so? and how is this greater 
 depth manifested? 
 
 Note the aptness of the phrasing throughout this passage, 
 e. g., lonely contemplation, kindred spirit. Both phrases ex- 
 press the idea to a nicety and in addition suggest more than at 
 first sight appears. Could you say as much for artless tale? 
 Why? 
 
 Note the very few details which Gray requires to portray 
 the complete pictures in stanzas 25, 26, 28, 29, 30. 
 
 LlXE 
 
 93 Thee: either Gray or — as seems more likely — the imagined 
 
 poet who is writing these lines. 
 100 After this stanza, in the first MS., followed these lines : 
 
64 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Him have we seen the greenwood side along, 
 While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, 
 Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song, 
 With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun. 
 
 "I rather wonder/' says Mason, "that he rejected this stanza, 
 as it not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy which charms 
 us peculiarly in this part of the poem, but also completes the 
 account of his whole day: whereas, this evening scene being 
 omitted, we have only his morning walk, and his noon-tide 
 repose." 
 Line 
 
 111 Another: What does this modify? 
 
 112 Lawn:. A field or meadow, any grass covered plot — not 
 necessarily artificial. 
 
 115 For thou canst read: "Nowadays, when practically every- 
 one can read, this parenthesis attracts rather too much at- 
 tention to itself." C. S. Thomas. 
 
 115 Lay: The inscription. The word was used for a kind of 
 narrative poem sung by the old minstrels, e. g., Sir Walter 
 Scott 1 s Lay of the Last Minstrel. Do you feel the word is 
 put in to carry the rhyme : or is it really an accurate term 
 for the epitaph ? 
 
 116 "Before the Epitaph," says Mason, "Gray originally in- 
 serted a very beautiful stanza, which was printed in some 
 of the first editions, but afterwards omitted, because lie 
 thought that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. 
 The lines, however, are in themselves exquisitely fine and 
 demand preservation : 
 
 There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, 
 By hands unseen are showers of violets found; 
 The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 
 
 Of this stanza Lowell says: "Some of the verses which he 
 discards . . . would have made the fortune of another poet. 
 Gray might run his pen through this, but he could not oblit- 
 erate it from the memory of men. Surely Wordsworth himself 
 never achieved a simplicity of language so pathetic in sugges- 
 tion, so musical in movement as this." 
 
 You should observe that the Epitaph is not a random bit of 
 sentiment appended at the conclusion of the poem, but is a 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 65 
 
 repetition and very particular application of the idea sug- 
 gested in Stanzas 8-11, that rank and wealth are of very small 
 account in the sum of man's existence and that only the things 
 of the soul are worthy of remembrance at the edge of the 
 grave. 
 
 These notes may seem to the student to deal with aceiden- 
 tials rather than with the heart of the subject as sublimated in 
 the poet's mind and expressed in perfect artistry. We suggest, 
 therefore, a means of attaining a truer appreciation. Let the 
 student read the poem and these notes attentively, then let him 
 pass on to the careful perusal of the other poems in this book, 
 learning meanwhile and reciting aloud each day, three or four 
 stanzas of the Elegy. Then let him take up a verbal study of 
 the piece, line by line, according to the rules of "Interest" as 
 explained on pages 33-50 of Model English, Book II. This 
 work diligently performed will benefit the student more than 
 the best comment. 
 
 The Bard 
 
 The form and the style of this ode are imitated from Pindar, 
 a Greek Poet who lived in the 5th Century, B. C, 
 
 The Theban eagle — sailing with supreme dominion 
 Through the azure deep of air. 
 
 — Progress of Poesy. 
 
 The Greek ode was sung by a marching chorus in the ancient 
 religious festivals. It was divided into three parts. The first 
 was called the strophe, and was sung as the chorus was advanc- 
 ing up one side of the orchestra space. The second part, or 
 antistrophe, they sang while they moved down the other side. 
 The conclusion, or Epode, was chanted by the chorus as it 
 stood before the altar. In the longer odes, which involved at 
 least one repetition of the movements just mentioned, there is 
 a symmetrical arrangement of parts so that each strophe, anti- 
 strophe and epode is exactly reproduced in length and meter 
 by that which follows it. 
 
 Gray attempts in his ode to reproduce this structure in 
 English. He has written a fine poem; but it owes little, we 
 think, to the difficult and complex form in which it has been 
 wrought. As Dr. Johnson says, "The stanzas are too long. . . 
 The ode is finished before the ear has learned' its measures, and 
 
66 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 consequently before it can receive pleasure from their con- 
 sonance and recurrence." 
 
 Gray says: "This ode is founded on a tradition current in 
 Wales that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest 
 of that country, ordered all the bards (or native minstrels) 
 that fell into his hands to be put to death." In his common- 
 place book, Gray gave the argument of the ode, as follows: 
 "The army of Edward L, as they march through a deep valley, 
 and approach Mount Snowden, are suddenly stopped by the 
 appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit of an 
 inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human, re- 
 proaches the king with all the desolation and misery which he 
 had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the 
 Norman race, and with his prophetic spirit declares that all 
 his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble ardor of poetic 
 genius in this island; and that men shall never be wanting to 
 celebrate true virtue and valor in immortal strains, to expose 
 vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and 
 oppression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the 
 mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its 
 feet." Gray tells us that the figure of the Bard is taken from 
 that picture of Raphael which, represents God in the vision of 
 Ezechiel. 
 
 Some knowledge of the history of the Plantagenet dynasty, 
 called by Gray the "Norman race," is necessary for an intelli- 
 gent appreciation of the poem. Edward I, the fifth Plan- 
 tagenet ruler of England, the conqueror of Wales, and the 
 "ruthless King" of the poem, was succeeded by his incompetent 
 son, Edward the second, who, through the disloyalty of his 
 wife, Isabella, "the she-wolf of France," was deposed, shut up 
 in Berkley Castle on the Severn and there murdered. 
 
 The next ruler was Isabella's son, Edward III, "The scourge 
 of Heaven," who began the disastrous 100 years' war with 
 France and in whose reign the terrible black plague visited 
 England and carried off about a third of the population. Ed- 
 ward's eldest son, called by Gray the "Sable Warrior," but 
 better known to history as the "Black Prince," died before 
 Edward himself. The old King therefore, as a mark of his 
 affection left the crown to the son of the Black Prince, who 
 became Richard II. He is "the rising sun" and "the gilded 
 vessel" referred to in the poem. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 67 
 
 His brief reign ended unhappily. He was deposed and, it 
 is said, starved to death by his cousins of the family of 
 Lancaster, whom he had superseded in the succession. The 
 Lancastrian line reigned in the persons of the next three kings 
 only to go down at last in the civil strife which it had itself 
 begun. The third Lancastrian King, Henry VI, called the 
 "meek usurper" in the poem, was deposed and killed in the 
 "long years # of havock" of the wars of the roses. The crown 
 passed to the family of York, the wearers of the rose of snow. 
 The third Yorkist King, Eichard III, made his way to the 
 throne by slaughtering his two young nephews, a fact to which 
 Gray refers in the words, "The bristled boar wallows in infant 
 gore." Richard III was succeeded by Henry Tudor, whose 
 grand-daughter Elizabeth is seen in the next strophe, as in a 
 vision, surrounded by the splendor of her court, and attended 
 by the "vocal transports" of poetry and song. In this poetry 
 the bard sees the triumph of his own cause and dies exulting. 
 
 The poem may be outlined as follows : After an abrupt and 
 vigorous introduction (I, 1), the bard laments over his mur- 
 dered brethren (I, 2, 3), then predicts the Death of Edward 
 
 11 and the ruinous wars of Edward III (II, 1), his death and 
 that of the Black Prince and the accession of Richard II 
 (II, 2), the death of Richard, the outbreak of the wars of the 
 roses, the murder of Henry VI and of the young Edward V 
 and his brother (II, 3). He turns to the glory and prosperity 
 following the accession of the Tudors (III, 1) through Eliza- 
 beth's reign (III, 2) and concludes with a vision of Elizabethan 
 poetry (III, 3). 
 
 From the outline it will be seen that there is a certain paral- 
 lel in the thought as well as in the form of the stanzas. 
 Line 
 3 "Conquest's crimson wing": What figure'? Does it suit 
 the verb fan? Why do you think that Gray thought of the 
 word crimson? 
 5 Hauberk: a coat of ring mail. 
 7 Cambria : the Latin name for Wales. 
 
 9 Crested pride: Do you like this phrase? what does it 
 mean? Gray says he borrowed it from Dryden's line: 
 "The crested adder's pride." Has he improved on Dryden? 
 
 12 Why does he use the word "wound" here? Suggest three 
 synonyms. 
 
68 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 22 "The deep sorrows of his lyre": What figure is this? Is 
 the same used in line 9? 
 
 28-34 As an example of Gray's precise learning Palgrave says 
 (commenting on this passage): "Soft" or gentle is the 
 epithet emphatically and specifically given to Llewellyn in 
 contemporary Welsh poetry, and is hence here used with 
 particular propriety." 
 
 Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart. 
 This line is a reminiscence of Shakespere's, 
 
 As dear to me as are the ruddy drops 
 That visit my sad heart. 
 
 49 The passage which begins here and ends at line 100 is sup- 
 posedly sung by the spirits of the bards while they are 
 weaving the web of fate for the Plantagenets. It is 
 prophetic and a curse, such as we might find in the Hebrew 
 prophets. See in the Bible, Isaias, chapters 47 and 63. In 
 such prophecies we should expect to find intensity, sim- 
 plicity and an allusiveness bordering on mystery. How are 
 these qualities illustrated in this passage? 
 
 52 Characters: letters. 
 
 59 From thee supply will be. 
 
 61-62 Lowell quotes these two lines in support of his assertion 
 that "any slave of the mine may find the rough gem, but it 
 is the cutting and polishing that reveal its heart of fire." 
 The suggestion (we are informed in the notes) came from 
 Cowper and Oldham, and the amazement combined with 
 flight sticks fast in prose. But the personification of Sor- 
 row and the fine generalization of Solitude in the last verse 
 which gives an imaginative reach to the whole passage are 
 Gray's own. The owners of what Gray conveyed would 
 have found it hard to identify their property and prove 
 title to it after it had once suffered Gray-change by steep- 
 ing in his mind and memory." 
 
 68 Explain why this line is so peculiarly impressive. 
 
 77-96 Why are not the changes in the thought of this stanza 
 more clearly marked? 
 
 95 What is "the accursed loom"? See note on line 49. 
 
 99 ''Half of thy heart we consecrate, ' ' perhaps a reminis- 
 cence of Horace's Animae dimidium meae, refers to the 
 death of Edward's wife Eleanor a few years after the con- 
 quest of Wales. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 69 
 
 109 Why should Welsh bards bewail Arthur? Why "long- 
 lost" f 
 
 110 genuine is used in its original meaning of the true stock. 
 111-112 Apply Lowell's remark on lines 61, 62, to these two 
 
 lines. 
 
 114^115 Are the phrases Gorgeous Dames and Bearded Maj- 
 esty well selected for the purpose of suggesting the royal 
 courtiers? Criticise from the same standpoint lines 118- 
 120. Has this second vision the sincerity and the force of 
 the preceding? Do you think its style is as good or better 
 than the style of stanzas II, 1, 2 and 3? Why? 
 
 121 Taliessin: a Welsh bard of the sixth century. 
 
 125-127 Spenser's Faery Queene is here alluded to. 
 
 128 buskin' d measures: The buskin, a thick-soled boot worn 
 by Greek tragic actors, was the symbol of tragedy. The 
 allusion is to Shakespeare's tragedies. 
 
 131-132 This reference is to Milton and Paradise Lost. 
 
 ±33 distant warblings: the poets who succeeded Milton. 
 
 135-36-37 Are the metaphors in these lines perfectly natural? 
 Would they be more pleasing if they were simpler? 
 
 143-144 Suggest another ending for the ode. Does the rhyme 
 help to give a sense of finality to the conclusion? Criticise 
 similarly lines 47, 48 and lines 95, 96. 
 
 Exercise: Write a prophetic curse upon some nation which 
 has done great wrong.. Imitate the directness and intensity 
 of this ode, also, as far as possible, its dramatic tableaux; 
 but do not spin out metaphors in Gray's manner. 
 
 The Hymn to Adversity 
 This is the most serious and exalted of Gray's shorter lyrics. 
 In the first stanza the poet expresses through metaphor the 
 power which adversity wields over even the proudest and 
 mightiest of men. In the second he explains by allegory the 
 truth that virtue is formed in the school of suffering. He then 
 recounts the evils to which adversity renders men immune, and 
 the virtues which attend her "solemn steps." He concludes 
 with a prayer to be visited by adversity, not in the frightful 
 guise with which it confronts the impious, but under that 
 milder aspect in which it chastens and perfects the just. 
 Line 
 1 relentless : note the aptness of this epithet. We might have 
 expected stern, grim, dread, or the like; but in this stanza 
 
70 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Gray is stressing the power or force of adversity. The 
 
 specific language in lines 2, 3, and 5 suggests dreadful 
 
 austerity with far more force than an epithet could. 
 7 purple tyrants: a translation of the classical purpureus 
 
 tyr annus, meaning, of course, a despot in his robes of state. 
 9-13 What is the meaning conveyed in these figurative lines'? 
 
 Express the same in a figure of your own invention. 
 11 Birth is an artificial expression for "that which is born/ 7 
 
 i. e., a child. 
 14 What is' the object of the verb bore? Discuss the aptness 
 
 of the phrasing. 
 17-40 Many personifications in these lines are similar to those 
 
 found in the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. 
 
 Which set of images do you think the more impressive? 
 
 Why? 
 22 summer friend: a daring and suggestive phrase such as is 
 
 frequently found in Shakespeare. What is its full and 
 
 exact meaning? 
 23-24 These lines are difficult because of the unusual position 
 
 of the participle received, which modifies they. The pro- 
 nouns they and her are not clearly referred to their nouns. 
 
 They refers to friend and foe. Her refers to Prosperity. 
 
 Vain is used in the sense of insecure, unstable, futile. 
 
 35 Gorgon : a fabulous monster, the sight of which struck men 
 dead. 
 
 36 vengeful band: the Furies, fiends who, according to the 
 Greeks, pursued and punished evil-doers. 
 
 38-39 In these lines the phrasing is much more apt and force- 
 ful than in line 40. Find a reason why. 
 
 41-48 This stanza is designed to balance the preceding. It 
 should, therefore, be equally forceful. From this aspect 
 criticise its thought and phrasing. 
 
 43 The philosophic train of Adversity are those men who have 
 borne misfortune with wisdom and fortitude. 
 
 48 Would the line be improved or marred by transposing the 
 verbs feel and know? Why? 
 
 Exercise: Write a hymn to "Courage," to "Wisdom," or to 
 Success," following the development of this ode and em- 
 ploying similar figures; or take the subject, "Tribulation" 
 or "The Cross," and develop it from religious principles 
 and sentiments. (Cf. Imitation of Christ, Bk. 2, Ch. 12.) 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 71 
 
 NOTES ON LYRICS BY COLLINS 
 
 Ode Written in 1746 
 
 The sincerity of these melodious and well turned verses has 
 enured their perpetuity and popularity, even though their 
 personifications sound somewhat stilted and artificial to modern 
 ears. 
 
 The occasion of the poem was probably the recent battle of 
 Fontenoy. 
 
 The first two lines of the second stanza may have been sug- 
 gested by a line of Ariel's song in Act 1, Sc. 2, of The Tempest. 
 
 Ode to Evening 
 
 This ode, the most perfect of Collins' poems, probably stands 
 to most readers as the piece most typical of his genius. Its 
 soft and apparently unstudied beauty comes from a lyric gift, 
 which we may with Swinburne put far beyond Gray's highest 
 reach. The personifications are unusually vivid; quickened, it 
 may be by the exquisite imagery and gentle music of the verse. 
 Line 
 
 2-3 Notice the open vowels and smooth conson/mt sounds 
 which here strike the keynote of the whole poem. 
 
 7 Brede: braid, texture. 
 14 Alliteration. Is it excessive? 
 15-16 Compare lines 7-8 of Gray's Elegy. 
 25 A river deity. 
 
 46 Yelling: Does this word harmonize with the delicate tones 
 of the piece? ' 
 
 Ode to Simplicity 
 
 This ode is addressed, after the fashion of the day, to the 
 personification of Simplicity, whose influence on classic poetry 
 and art is proclaimed and whose presence is declared necessary 
 for the effectiveness of any artistic appeal. 
 Line 
 14 Hybla's thymy shore: Hybla is a mountain near Syracuse 
 
 in Sicily, famous for its flowers and honey. 
 16 Her whose love-lorn woe : The nightingale, which was very 
 
 common in the groves about Attfens, must have been heard 
 
 innumerable times by Sophocles, author of the tragedy, 
 
 Electra. 
 
72 . LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Collins may have in mind the passage of the tragedy 
 where the heroine, brooding over the unavenged death of 
 her father, sings : 
 
 I will not refrain from weeping nor from lamentation 
 
 While yet I do behold the trembling radiance of the stars, 
 
 And this broad light of day. 
 
 But, as a nightingale, reft of her nestlings. 
 
 My voice will I lift in sorrow 
 
 To be heard of all, 
 
 Here before the portal of my father's house. 
 
 lines 104-109. 
 
 19 Cephisus' enamell'd side: Cephisus, a river near Athens, 
 which flows at the foot of Mt. Parnassus and was the haunt 
 of the Graces. 
 
 Enamell'd — the metaphor is from the jeweller's craft. 
 A full discussion of it may be found in Ruskin's Modem 
 Painters, Vol. Ill, Ch. XIV, No. 48. 
 
 31-36 While the spirit of Rome was independent and incor- 
 rupt, Simplicity characterized her literature, but when the 
 land was altered by the establishment of the imperial gov- 
 ernment ? Simplicity lingered indeed before the throne of 
 Augustus (in the poetry of Virgil, Horace and Ovid), but 
 at his death fled, not to be recalled by either the olive or 
 the vine (symbolic of the beauty and luxury of Italy). 
 
 39 Mean: demean, abase. 
 
 48 Meeting soul, i. e., "the soul which moved forward sympa- 
 thetically toward Simplicity as she comes to inspire the 
 poet." Palgrave. 
 
 Ode On the Death of Mr. Thomson 
 
 This ode is an elegy on the poet Thomson, who had been 
 Collins' friend. It is not so perfect as the Ode to Evening, 
 yet seems to be comparable to it for the softness of its 'gentle 
 music, and, moreover, to embody a luxurious melancholy all 
 its own. The scene of the poem is supposed to be laid on the 
 Thames, near Richmond Church, beneath the "whitening spire" 
 of which Thomson was buried. 
 Line 
 1 Druid: Priest of the ancient Celtic nature cult. Thomson 
 was a Scot and a poet of nature. 
 39 Hind: Peasant. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 73 
 
 NOTES ON LYRICS BY COWPER 
 
 Loss of the ' 'Royal George* ' 
 
 The Eoyal George, a battleship of 108 guns, while laid par- 
 tially on her beam for an overhauling, was capsized and sunk 
 in 1782. Nearly a thousand men went down with her, among 
 them her commander, the "brave Kempenfelt." 
 
 Of this poem Palgrave says, — "The reader who feels the 
 vigor of description and the force of pathos underlying 
 Cowper's bare and truly Greek simplicity of phrase, may 
 assure himself se valde profecisse (that he has made good 
 progress), in poetry." 
 
 The Poplar Field 
 
 The sincerity and simplicity of these verses make the moral- 
 izing at the conclusion seem entirely natural and unforced. 
 The poem requires little comment beyond calling attention to 
 the hearty realism of the description, especially in stanzas 
 1, 3 and 4, and giving a caution against reading the meter into 
 a sing-song. 
 
 The Ouse was the little river that flowed by Olney, where 
 Cowper passed the early years of his intimacy with Mrs. 
 Unwin. 
 
 To Mary Unwin 
 
 This sonnet was written in 1793 to the lady who had nursed 
 Cowper in his lunacy nearly thirty years before, and who had 
 since, by her devotion, preserved Cowper' s sanity and rekindled 
 his genius. At the time when these lines were written Mrs. 
 Unwin had grown quite old and helpless. 
 
 The piece is so perfect that we prefer to quote Palgrave's 
 opinion of it, rather than to attempt a criticism of our own. 
 Palgrave writes: "The editor would venture to class (this 
 sonnet) in the very first rank. . . . Cowper unites with an 
 exquisiteness in the turn of thought ... an intensity of pa- 
 thetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature. 
 . . . There is much mannerism, much that is unimportant or 
 of now exhausted interest in his poems; but where he is great, 
 it is with that elemental greatness which rests on the most 
 universal human feelings. Cowper is our highest master in 
 simple pathos." 
 
74 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 To the Same 
 
 C. S. Thomas 7 note to this poem reads: "This poem was 
 written a few months after the preceding and about two years 
 before the poet left the house where he and Mrs. Unwin had 
 lived so many years. She, in the meantime, had grown more 
 childish and exacting. In one of the poet's letters he tells his 
 correspondent that Mrs. Unwin is at that moment sitting in 
 the same room and that she breaks out at times into a senseless 
 laugh, and at other times mumbles incoherently to herself. She 
 would allow him to do little work, and whenever he read she 
 insisted that he should read aloud to her. 
 
 "The only way he could perform any literary labor was to 
 arise early before she was astir. Yet with all these annoyances 
 Cowper continued to hold her in deep affection, all the while 
 dimly conscious that her mental condition was hurrying him to 
 final insanity. But he remembered that it was his distress that 
 brought her low." 
 
 In this poem are mingled feelings of love with feelings of 
 sorrow. Love is chastened and softened by sorrow T , sorrow is 
 sweetened and ennobled by love. Recalling Cowper's habitual 
 melancholy and his intensely religious mind, we must believe 
 that line 3 and the expressions in stanzas 6, 7 and 8, which we 
 might be inclined to discount as exaggerated, are utterly sin- 
 cere. 
 
 On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture Out of Norfolk 
 
 Cowper's mother died when he was in his sixth year. Many 
 years after, his cousin, Ann Bodham, sent him a portrait of his 
 mother. The poem is in the form of an address to it. 
 
 LlXE 
 
 11 Remembrancer is that which reminds, token. 
 
 19 Elysian reverie — A dream of Elysium: — the abode of the 
 blessed after death, as believed by the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans. Here the happiness of the souls of the virtuous 
 was complete, and their pleasures continual. 
 
 21-27 These lines are an address to his mother, believing her 
 to be present in accordance with lines 18-20. He puts a 
 series of questions and then answers them in the affirma- 
 tive; as though he was simply repeating the answer given 
 in his mother's smile, line 27. 
 
 88-105 Cowper compares his mother to a ship which has left 
 England (Albion's coast), has weathered rough seas and 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 75 
 
 entered a peaceful and beautiful haven, where it has been 
 joined by its consort (meaning Cowper's father). Con- 
 tinuing the comparison he likens himself to a vessel still 
 battling with the storms. 
 114 Contemplation's help: Help of continued thought or 
 study. Here used as having called up to his remembrance 
 all that happened to him in childhood. 
 
 118 Wings of fancy: See line 18. 
 
 119 Mimic show: An imitation, i. e., her portrait. 
 120-121 Time has taken away the person, but not the power. 
 
 The Castaway 
 
 This was the last original poem which Cowper wrote. He 
 was deep in the terrible melancholia which amid recurrent fits 
 of madness darkened his last years. In the story of this cast- 
 away, which he had read in Lord George Anson's Voyage 
 Bound the World, he saw a symbol of his own fate and gave 
 it expression with grim realism and a passion so intense as to 
 pass beyond excitement into the quiet of despair. We may say 
 of this poem what Palgrave said of another lyric : "It has that 
 sad earnestness and vivid exactness which Cardinal Newman 
 ascribes to the masterpieces of ancient poetry." 
 
76 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 Exercises 
 
 Besides the brief exercises suggested in the notes, the fol- 
 lowing exercise-forms, applicable to almost any poem, will be 
 found useful for giving the pupil a practicable appreciation 
 of the literary principles illustrated in these selections. 
 
 1) From a given poem let the pupils select that which 
 they judge to be the most beautiful single line or phrase. 
 If there be an} 7 difference of judgment, let the merits of the 
 various choices be discussed in impromptu debate, the 
 teacher supplying the principles upon which the final ver- 
 dict is to be based. 
 
 2) The same plan may be extended to the whole group 
 of selections from any author, the object of discussion 
 being to determine the most perfect stanza. 
 
 3) In the notes on Gray's poems several phrases are 
 quoted which the author has adapted from other poets. 
 Innumerable other examples are to be found in the Aldine 
 edition of Gray's works and in Professor Rolfe's Select 
 Poems by Thomas Gray. In the case of each adaptation 
 the pupil may be required to decide whether the phrase has 
 gained or lost in descriptive and emotional power, and to 
 sustain his decision with reasons. 
 
 In some cases the editor has expressed an opinion. The 
 class could be required to object. In other cases the teacher 
 may object to some statement in the notes and require the 
 class to uphold it. 
 These exercises are suitable for oral drill and class discus- 
 sion. If they are well prepared and carried through with 
 energy, they may be most profitable. "This process will give 
 an opportunity to bring before the class very many notions of 
 a literary character which are not to be found in text books. 
 It will also open up the minds of the student to a keener and 
 steadier appreciation of literature. (F. M. Connell, S.J.) 
 
 The exercises which follow should be written in note books, 
 or if done by the teacher in concert with the class, the results 
 should be recorded by each student and kept to supply matter 
 for the written examination. 
 
 1) The word or the idea, which occurs most frequently 
 in the author is decided upon and a list of phrases is drawn 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 77 
 
 up which contains all the recurrences of that word or of 
 its synonyms. Then the variations in meaning, and the 
 peculiar adaptability of each phrase to its context is dis- 
 cussed, and a choice is made of the phrase most aptly 
 descriptive, or most suggestive, or most charged with emo- 
 tional significance. 
 
 Thus in the selections from Gray the phrases which are 
 of most common occurrence are those connected with the 
 idea of happiness. The Ode on the Pleasure arising from 
 Vicissitude is entirely devoted to this theme. The idea is 
 brought out explicitly in the phrases : "Trembling thrilling 
 ecstacy," "Raptures wildly flow/' "Smiles on past Misfor- 
 tune's brow," "Hope gilds with a gleam of distant day," 
 "Where rosy Pleasure leads," "Approaching Comfort," 
 "The hues of bliss," "The skies, to him are opening Para- 
 dise." In the Ode on Spring the poet speaks of zephyrs 
 "whispering pleasure as they fly," and of the insect-youth 
 "eager to taste the honeyed spring," who answer him, "Thy 
 joys no glittering female meets, we frolic while 'tis May." 
 In the Eton Ode he feels the gales bestow on his soul "a 
 momentary bliss" as they pass "on gladsome wing," "re- 
 dolent of joy and youth." He mentions labor employed 
 "to sweeten liberty," "fearful joy," "sunshine of the 
 breast," "lively cheer," and concludes with the epigram: 
 
 "Thought would destroy their Paradise, 
 No more; — where ignorance is bliss 
 'T is folly to be wise." 
 
 In the Elegy occur the phrases, "homely joys," "plenty 
 o'er a smiling land," "smiling as in scorn." In the Ode to 
 Adversity we have the picture of Wisdom "immersed in 
 rapturous thought profound," arid in The Bard the lines: 
 
 "Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyrs blow, 
 
 Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm: 
 
 ********* 
 
 What strains of vocal transport round her play? 
 
 ********* 
 
 Bright Rapture calls, — soaring as she sings." 
 
78 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Similarly from the selections from Cowper a list of 
 words could be drawn up embodying the idea of melan- 
 choly. In Collins the idea of softness or gentle delicacy is 
 of most frequent occurrence. 
 
 2) When the finest' phrase has been chosen the class is 
 required to reproduce it in different words with all its sug- 
 gestive and emotional force. The same may be done with 
 any finer phrase chosen from the poems. 
 
 3) Another exercise consists in analysis of the imagina- 
 tive and emotional factors of a poem, or in a longer piece, 
 of one of its natural divisions. First, the thought expressed 
 ki the lines is briefly stated. Beneath this statement is 
 written a complete list of the images expressed or suggested 
 in the passage, and after each image the phrase is given 
 which conveys it. Then is asked, "What emotion reveals 
 itself in the passage ? By what words, or by what modes of 
 expression is the feeling betrayed?" 
 
 The answers to these questions are recorded in the note- 
 books beside the list of images, and a discussion may be 
 held as to the appropriateness of the images to the emotion, 
 and of the effectiveness of the phrases considered individ- 
 ually. This exercise is illustrated in the notes on Stanzas 
 1-4 of Gray's Elegy. 
 
 4) Finally an excellent form of exercise consists in imi- 
 tation. These can be short themes in class or longer com- 
 petitions written at home. Beneath the notes on each of 
 Gray's poems except the Elegy (which does not lend itself 
 well to this exercise), are suggested subjects to be devel- 
 oped along the lines of thought which the poet followed. 
 These imitations may be written either in prose or in un- 
 rhymed verses. Perhaps that combination of the two forms 
 which is known now-a-days as vers libre will be found most 
 natural to the student. In any case, he should approach 
 the subject in the same frame of mind as the poet, and 
 should borrow from the piece its general tone and manner 
 of phraseology. 
 
LYRICS FROM GRAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 79 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 Figures 
 
 A figure is a departure from the ordinary modes of speech 
 prompted by the desire of the author to express himself more 
 fully and intensely. 
 
 I. Figures Founded on Resemblance. 
 
 1) Simile or comparison 
 
 "The cruel rocks they gored her side 
 Like the horns of an angry bull" 
 "Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno." 
 
 2) Metaphor is a suggested comparison. 
 "The night has a thousand eyes." 
 "Ponto nox incubat atra." 
 
 3) Allegory or Parable is an extended treatment of one 
 subject under the image of another. 
 
 "Sail on, Sail on, thou ship of state!" 
 cf. II Kings, 1-4, Horace, Bk. I, Ode 14. 
 
 4) Personification attributes to things human actions or 
 qualities. 
 
 "Pride goeth forth on horseback, grand and gay 
 But cometh back on foot and begs its way." 
 
 "Illi indignant es, magno cum murmure, montis 
 Circum claustra fremunt." Aeneid I, 55. 
 
 II. ARTIFICIALITY.— Under this Name May Be In- 
 cluded Many Figures Arising from a Desire for Novelty 
 of Expression. 
 
 1) The substituting for a well-known phrase another 
 which suggests it, yet differs from it. (Hypallage.) 
 "Laborious orient ivory" for "carefully icrought works 
 
 in ivory from the east" 
 "Hie labor ille domus" for "hie est ilia laborata domus." 
 
 2) Using the name of one thing to suggest another to 
 which it is related. (Synecdoche and Metonymy.) 
 "My ventures are not in one bottom trusted." 
 
 " Summersasque obrue puppes." 
 
80 LOYOLA ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 "I with my sword 
 Quartered the world and on green Neptune's back 
 With ships made cities." 
 "Implentur veteris Bacchi pinguisque ferinae." 
 
 3) Using two nouns instead of a noun and modifier. 
 (Hendiadys.) 
 
 "Decessit de terrore et hello." "He fled the horror and 
 the war." 
 
 4) Employing words in unusual positions — (especially 
 hysteron proteron). 
 
 "Whole legions sink — and, in one instant, find burial 
 
 and death" 
 "Moriamur et in media arma ruamus." 
 
 III. Figures Resulting from Some Turn which the 
 Thought Takes from the Writer's Emotion. 
 
 1) Questions and exclamations are sometimes used to 
 make emphatic declarations. 
 
 "What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world?" 
 "How like a winter hath mine absence been!" 
 
 2) Apostrophe is an address to an absent person or to a 
 personified object. 
 
 "0 eloquent, just and mighty Death!" 
 
 3) Irony consists in implying a certain meaning while 
 stating the exact opposite. 
 
 "For Brutus is an honorable man!" 
 
 4) Hyperbole is gross and manifest exaggeration. 
 "All earth knew and trembled" 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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