Select Poems of Thomas Gray - Thomas Gray (book club reads TXT) 📗

href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@30357@30357-h@30357-h-1.htm.html#poesy4" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">49. Hurd quotes Cowley: "Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
 And Sleep, the lazy owl of night;
 Asham'd and fearful to appear,
 They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere."

Wakefield cites Milton, Hymn on Nativity, 233 foll.: "The flocking shadows pale," etc. See also P. R. iv. 419-431.

50. Birds of boding cry. Cf. Green's Grotto: "news the boding night-birds tell."

52. Gray refers to Cowley, Brutus:

"One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow,
 Or seen her well-appointed star.
 Come marching up the eastern hill afar."

The following variations on 52 and 53 are found in the MS.:

Till fierce Hyperion from afar
Pours on their scatter'd rear, |
Hurls at      "      flying     "     | his glittering shafts of war.
    "   o'er    "    scatter'd    "   |
    "     "      "    shadowy    "   |
Till      "      "         "         "    from far
Hyperion hurls around his, etc.

The accent of Hyperion is properly on the penult, which is long in quantity, but the English poets, with rare exceptions, have thrown it back upon the antepenult. It is thus in the six instances in which Shakes. uses the word: e.g. Hamlet, iii. 4: "Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself." The word does not occur in Milton. It is correctly accented by Drummond (of Hawthornden), Wand. Muses:

"That Hyperion far beyond his bed
 Doth see our lions ramp, our roses spread;"

by West, Pindar's Ol. viii. 22:

"Then Hyperion's son, pure fount of day,
 Did to his children the strange tale reveal;"

also by Akenside, and by the author of the old play Fuimus Troes (A.D. 1633):

          "Blow, gentle Africus,
Play on our poops when Hyperion's son
Shall couch in west."

Hyperion was a Titan, the father of Helios (the Sun), Selene (the Moon), and Eos (the Dawn). He was represented with the attributes of beauty and splendor afterwards ascribed to Apollo. His "glittering shafts" are of course the sunbeams, the "lucida tela diei" of Lucretius. Cf. a very beautiful description of the dawn in Lowell's Above and Below:

"'Tis from these heights alone your eyes
     The advancing spears of day can see,
 Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise,
     To break your long captivity."

We may quote also his Vision of Sir Launfal:

"It seemed the dark castle had gathered all
 Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall
     In his siege of three hundred summers long," etc.

54. Gray's note here is as follows: "Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connection with liberty and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh fragments; the Lapland and American songs.]" He also quotes Virgil, Æn. vi. 796: "Extra anni solisque vias," and Petrarch, Canz. 2: "Tutta lontana dal camin del sole." Cf. also Dryden, Thren. August. 353: "Out of the solar walk and Heaven's highway;" Ann. Mirab. st. 160: "Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's highway;" Brit. Red.: "Beyond the sunny walks and circling year;" also Pope, Essay on Man, i. 102: "Far as the solar walk and milky way."

56. Twilight gloom. Wakefield quotes Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 188: "The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

57. Wakefield says, "It almost chills one to read this verse." The MS. variations are "buried native's" and "chill abode."

60. Repeat [their chiefs, etc.]. Sing of them again and again.

61. In loose numbers, etc. Cf. Milton, L'All. 133:

"Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
 Warble his native wood-notes wild;"

and Horace, Od. iv. 2, 11:

              "numerisque fertur
Lege solutis."

62. Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs. Cf. P. L. ix. 1115:

                            "Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt
With feather'd cincture."

64. Glory pursue. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton compares Homer, Il. v. 774:

hêchi rhoas Simoeis sumballeton êde Skamandros.

Dugald Stewart (Philos. of Human Mind) says: "I cannot help remarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression."

65. Freedom's holy flame. Cf. Akenside, Pleas. of Imag. i. 468: "Love's holy flame."

THE VALE OF TEMPE THE VALE OF TEMPE.

66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since" (Gray).

Delphi's steep. Cf. Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 178: "the steep of Delphos;" P. L. i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. and Milton prefer the mediæval form Delphos to the more usual Delphi. Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end "in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak named the Phædriades, from their glittering appearance as they faced the rays of the sun" (Smith's Anc. Geog.).

67. Isles, etc. Cf. Byron:

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
     Where burning Sappho loved and sung," etc.

68. Ilissus. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus, flows through the east side of Athens.

69. Mæander's amber waves. Cf. Milton, P. L. iii. 359: "Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;" P. R. iii. 288: "There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 520: "Purior electro campum petit amnis." Callimachus (Cer. 29) has [Greek: alektrinon hudôr].

70. Ovid, Met. viii. 162, describes the Mæander thus:

"Non secus ac liquidis Phrygiis Maeandros in arvis
 Ludit, et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque."

Cf. also Virgil's description of the Mincius (Geo. iii. 15):

            —"tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat
Mincius."

"The first great metropolis of Hellenic intellectual life was Miletus on the Mæander. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, Cadmus, Hecatæus, etc., were all Milesians" (Hales).

71 foll. Cf. Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 181:

           "The lonely mountains o'er,
            And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
            From haunted spring and dale,
            Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent:" etc.

75. Hallowed fountain. Cf. Virgil, Ecl. i. 53: "fontes sacros."

76. The MS. has "Murmur'd a celestial sound."

80. Vice that revels in her chains. In his Ode for Music, 6, Gray has "Servitude that hugs her chain."

81. Hales quotes Collins, Ode to Simplicity:

           "While Rome could none esteem
            But Virtue's patriot theme,
You lov'd her hills, and led her laureate band;
            But staid to sing alone
            To one distinguish'd throne,
And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land."

84. Nature's darling. "Shakespeare" (Gray). Cf. Cleveland, Poems:

"Here lies within this stony shade
 Nature's darling; whom she made
 Her fairest model, her brief story,
 In him heaping all her glory."

On green lap, cf. Milton, Song on May Morning:

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
 The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."

85. Lucid Avon. Cf. Seneca, Thyest. 129: "gelido flumine lucidus Alpheos."

86. The mighty mother. That is, Nature. Pope, in the Dunciad, i. 1, uses the same expression in a satirical way:

"The Mighty Mother, and her Son, who brings
 The Smithfield Muses to the ear of kings,
 I sing."

See also Dryden, Georgics, i. 466:

"On the green turf thy careless limbs display,
 And celebrate the mighty mother's day."

87. The dauntless child. Cf. Horace, Od. iii. 4, 20: "non sine dis animosus infans." Wakefield quotes Virgil, Ecl. iv. 60: "Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem." Mitford points out that the identical expression occurs in Sandys's translation of Ovid, Met. iv. 515:

                                           "the child
Stretch'd forth its little arms, and on him smil'd."

See also Catullus, In Nupt. Jun. et Manl. 216:

"Torquatus volo parvulus
 Matris e gremio suae
 Porrigens teneras manus,
 Dulce rideat."

91. These golden keys. Cf. Young, Resig.:

"Nature, which favours to the few
     All art beyond imparts,
 To him presented at his birth
     The key of human hearts."

Wakefield cites Comus, 12:

"Yet some there be, that with due steps aspire
 To lay their hands upon that golden key
 That opes the palace of eternity."

See also Lycidas, 110:

"Two massy keys he bore of metals twain;
 The golden opes, the iron shuts amain."

93. Of horror. A MS. variation is "Of terror."

94. Or ope the sacred source. In a letter to Dr. Wharton, Sept. 7, 1757, Gray mentions, among other criticisms upon this ode, that "Dr. Akenside criticises opening a source with a key." But, as Mitford remarks, Akenside himself in his Ode on Lyric Poetry has, "While I so late unlock thy purer springs," and in his Pleasures of Imagination, "I unlock the springs of ancient wisdom."

95. Nor second he, etc. "Milton" (Gray).

96, 97. Cf. Milton, P. L. vii. 12:

                         "Up led by thee,
Into the heaven of heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air."

98. The flaming bounds, etc. Gray quotes Lucretius, i. 74: "Flammantia moenia mundi." Cf. also Horace, Epist. i. 14, 9: "amat spatiis obstantia rumpere claustra."

99. Gray quotes Ezekiel i. 20, 26, 28. See also Milton, At a Solemn Music, 7: "Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne;" Il Pens. 53: "the fiery-wheeled throne;" P. L. vi. 758:

"Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
 Amber, and colours of the showery arch;"

and id. vi. 771:

"He on the wings of cherub rode sublime,
 On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned."

101. Blasted with excess of light. Cf. P. L. iii. 380: "Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear."

102. Cf. Virgil, Æn. x. 746: "in aeternam clauduntur lumina noctem," which Dryden translates, "And closed her lids at last in endless night." Gray quotes Homer, Od. viii. 64:

Ophthalmôn men amerses, didou d' hêdeian aoidên.

103. Gray, according to Mason, "admired Dryden almost beyond bounds."3

3 In a journey through Scotland in 1765, Gray became acquainted with Beattie, to whom he commended the study of Dryden, adding that "if there was any excellence in his own numbers, he had learned it wholly from the great poet."

105. "Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes" (Gray). Cf. Pope, Imit. of Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 267:

"Waller was smooth: but Dryden taught to join
 The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
 The long majestic march, and energy divine."

106. Gray quotes Job xxxix. 19: "Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?"

108. Bright-eyed. The MS. has "full-plumed."

110. Gray quotes Cowley, Prophet: "Words that weep, and tears that speak."

Dugald Stewart remarks upon this line: "I have sometimes thought that Gray had in view the two different effects of words already described; the effect of some in awakening the powers of conception and imagination; and that of others in exciting associated emotions."

111. "We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for Cowley (who had his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some