What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear!1

They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colored wings."
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.2
A voice, as of the cherub choir,

Gales from blooming Eden bear ;3

And distant warblings lessen on my ear,4
That lost in long futurity expire.

Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised 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 plunged to endless night.5

Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear.] Taliessin, chief of the Bards, flourished in the sixth century. His works are still preserved, and his memory is held in high veneration among his countrymen.

2 Shakspeare.

3 Milton.

And distant warblings lessen on my ear.] The succession of poets after Milton's time.

The original argument of this capital Ode, as its author had set it down in one of the pages of his common-place book, is as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they march through a deep valley, 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, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with 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 foot."

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD.'

The Curfew tolls2 the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,3
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

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.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

1 The reasons of that universal approbation with which this Elegy has been received, may be learned from the comprehensive encomium of Dr. Johnson: "It abounds with images which find a mirror in every soul; and with sentiments, to which every bosom returns an echo."

"Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it is the corner-stone of his glory."-Lord Byron.

2 Dr. Warton would spoil the tranquil simplicity of this line, by introducing a pause with a note of admiration after the word "tolls." But such affectation of solemnity and suddenness in his musing is nowhere to be found in our author.

3 This line I find so printed in all the editions: I would, however, suggest as an amendment

Beneath those rugged elms that yew-trees shade,

making "that" a relative pronoun the nominative to the verb "shade,” instead of a demonstrative agreeing with "shade" as a noun; and "yew-trees" in the objective plural, and governed by the verb "shade." I think this more easy, natural, and strictly correct.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike th' inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

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 pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,'
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

A writer in the ninth volume of the Quarterly Review cites the following passage from Bishop Hall's Contemplations, as a singular instance of accidental resemblance: "There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a fair pearl in the bosom of the sea, that never was seen, nor never shall be." So Milton in his Comus speaks of the

"Sea-girt isles,

That, like to rich and various gems, inlay

The unadorned bosom of the deep."

"What son of Freedom is not in raptures with this tribute of praise to such an exalted character, in immortal verse? This honorable testimony and the noble detestation of arbitrary power, with which it is accompanied, might possibly be one cause of Dr. Johnson's animosity against our poet. Upon this topic, the critic's feelings, we know, were irritability itself and 'tremblingly alive all o'er.'"

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n 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.

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.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.3

1 Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.] These two verses are specimens of sublimity of the purest kind, like the simple grandeur of Hebrew poetry; depending solely on the thought, unassisted by epithets and the artificial decorations of expression.

"In Gray's Elegy, is there an image more striking than his "shapeless sculpture?"-Lord Byron.

In the first edition it stood,

'Awake and faithful to her wonted fires,'

and I think rather better. He means to say, in plain prose, that we wish to be remembered by our friends after our death, in the same manner as when alive we wished to be remembered by them in our absence: this would be expressed clearer, if the metaphorical term 'fires' was rejected, and the line run thus:

'Awake and faithful to her first desires.'

I do not put this alteration down for the idle vanity of aiming to amend the passage, but purely to explain it."-Mason.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonor'd Dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred Spirit shall inquire thy fate,
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.
"There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.
"One morn I miss'd him on the accustom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"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,
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."1

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown,
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear;

He gain'd from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)

The bosom of his Father and his God.2

Between this line and the Epitaph, Mr. Gray originally inserted a very beautiful stanza, which was printed in some of the first editions, but afterwards omitted, because he thought (and in my opinion very justly) that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines, however, are, in themselves, exquisitely fine, and demand preservation.-Mason.

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
The red-breast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

2 This epitaph has been commented on, and translated into different lan