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

III. 3.
    "The verse adorn again
    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.
    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,
    Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,
    And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me; with joy I see
    The different doom our fates assign.
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 plung'd to endless night.




100




105




110








115




120








125




130




135




140

QUEEN ELIZABETH QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Decoration

HYMN TO ADVERSITY. Zêna—— Ton phronein brotous hodô- santa, tôi pathei mathan Thenta kuriôs echein. ÆSCHYLUS

               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,
    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,
    To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
        And bade to form her infant mind.
    Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
    With patience many a year she bore:
    What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' woe.

    Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly
        Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,
    Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
        And leave us leisure to be good.
    Light they disperse, and with them go
    The summer friend, the flattering foe;
    By vain Prosperity receiv'd,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd.

    Wisdom in sable garb array'd,
        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,
    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,
        Not 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:

    Thy form benign, O goddess, wear,
        Thy milder influence impart;
    Thy philosophic train be there
        To soften, not to wound, my heart.
    The generous spark extinct revive,
    Teach me to love and to forgive,
    Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.



5





10




15





20





25




30





35




40





45

BERKELEY CASTLE BERKELEY CASTLE. "Mark the year, and mark the night,
 When Severn shall reëcho with affright
 The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring,
 Shrieks of an agonizing king!"
                                            The Bard, 53.

NOTES.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.

A. S., Anglo-Saxon.

Arc., Milton's Arcades.

C. T., Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Cf. (confer), compare.

D. V., Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Ep., Epistle, Epode.

Foll., following.

F. Q., Spenser's Faërie Queene.

H., Haven's Rhetoric (Harper's edition).

Hales, Longer English Poems, edited by Rev. J. W. Hales (London, 1872).

Il Pens., Milton's Il Penseroso.

L'All., Milton's L'Allegro.

Ol., Pindar's Olympian Odes.

P. L., Milton's Paradise Lost.

P. R., Milton's Paradise Regained.

S. A., Milton's Samson Agonistes.

Shakes. Gr., Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (the references are to sections, not pages).

Shep. Kal., Spenser's Shepherd's Kalendar.

st., stanza.

Wb., Webster's Dictionary (last revised quarto edition).

Worc., Worcester's Dictionary (quarto edition).

Other abbreviations (names of books in the Bible, plays of Shakespeare, works of Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, etc.) need no explanation.

NOTES. Original manuscript

ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

This poem was begun in the year 1742, but was not finished until 1750, when Gray sent it to Walpole with a letter (dated June 12, 1750) in which he says: "I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue good part of the summer), and having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it: a merit that most of my writings have wanted, and are like to want." It was shown in manuscript to some of the author's friends, and was published in 1751 only because it was about to be printed surreptitiously.

February 11, 1751, Gray wrote to Walpole that the proprietors of "the Magazine of Magazines" were about to publish his Elegy, and added, "I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself,1 and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be—'Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard.' If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better." Walpole did as requested, and wrote an advertisement to the effect that accident alone brought the poem before the public, although an apology was unnecessary to any but the author. On which Gray wrote, "I thank you for your advertisement, which saves my honour."

1 Dodsley's proof-reading must have been somewhat careless, for there are many errors of the press in this editio princeps. Gray writes to Walpole, under date of "Ash-Wednesday, Cambridge, 1751," as follows: "Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or two in the cradle, that (I doubt) it will bear the marks of as long as it lives. But no matter: we have ourselves suffered under her hands before now; and besides, it will only look the more careless and by accident as it were." Again, March 3, 1751, he writes: "I do not expect any more editions; as I have appeared in more magazines than one. The chief errata were sacred for secret; hidden for kindred (in spite of dukes and classics); and 'frowning as in scorn' for smiling. I humbly propose, for the benefit of Mr. Dodsley and his matrons, that take awake [in line 92, which at first read "awake and faithful to her wonted fires"] for a verb, that they should read asleep, and all will be right." Other errors were, "Their harrow oft the stubborn glebe," "And read their destiny in a nation's eyes," "With uncouth rhymes and shapeless culture decked," "Slow through the churchway pass," and many of minor importance.

A writer in Notes and Queries, June 12, 1875, states that the poem first appeared in the London Magazine, March, 1751, p. 134, and that "the Magazine of Magazines" is "a gentle term of scorn used by Gray to indicate" that periodical, and not the name of any actual magazine. But in the next number of Notes and Queries (June 19, 1875) Mr. F. Locker informs us that he has in his possession a title-page of the Grand Magazine of Magazines, and the page of the number for April, 1751, which contains the Elegy. The magazine is said to be "collected and digested by Roger Woodville, Esq.," and "published by Cooper at the Globe, in Pater Noster Row."

Gray says nothing in his letters of the appearance of the Elegy in the London Magazine. The full title of that periodical was "The London Magazine: or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer." The editor's name was not given; the publisher was "R. Baldwin, jun. at the Rose in Pater-Noster Row." The volume for 1751 was the 20th, and the Preface (written at the close of the year) begins thus: "As the two most formidable Enemies we have ever had, are now extinct, we have great Reason to conclude, that it is only the Merit, and real Usefulness of our COLLECTION, that hath supported its Sale and Reputation for Twenty Years." A foot-note informs us that the "Enemies" are the "Magazine of Magazines and Grand Magazine of Magazines;" from which it would appear that there were two periodicals of similar name published in London in 1751.2

2 May not the Elegy have been printed in both of these? We do not know how otherwise to reconcile the conflicting statements concerning the "Magazine of Magazines," as Gray calls it. In the first place, Gray appears (from other portions of his letter to Walpole) to be familiar with this magazine, and would not be likely to confound it with another of similar name. Then, as we have seen, he writes early in March to Walpole that the poem has been printed "in more magazines than one." This cannot refer to the Grand Magazine of Magazines, if, as Mr. Locker states, it was the April number of that periodical in which the poem appeared. Nor can it refer to the London Magazine, as it is clear from internal evidence that the March number, containing the Elegy, was not issued until early in April. It contains a summary of current news down to Sunday, March 31, and the price of stocks in the London market for March 30. The February number, in its "monthly catalogue" of new books,