24 For thee, who mindful of th' unhonoured dead Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

25

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.

26

"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.

27

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove, Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

28

"One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

29

"The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.

THE EPITAPH

30

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.

31

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 gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

32

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.

9 perchance

3 Jove's eagle

4 In Cyprus, sacred to Venus (Cytherea).

turn.

* The odes of Pindar, the most renowned lyric poet of ancient Greece, were mostly constructed in symmetrical triads, each triad containing a strophe, antistrophe, and epode, or counter-turn, and after-song. Metrically the strophes and antistrophes all corresponded exactly throughout, and likewise the epodes. The livelier odes were written in what was known as the Eolian mood, in contrast to the graver Dorian mood and the more tender Lydian measures. Gray has borrowed freely from Pindar, even translating a portion of the first Pythian Ode. The following is a condensation of Gray's notes to his own poem: I. 1. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches.-I. 2. Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul.-I. 3. Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body. II. 1. Poetry given to mankind to compensate the real and imaginary ills of life.-II. 2. Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations. II. 3. Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England.-III. 1. 2. 3. Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden.

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen
On Cytherea's day

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;

Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
Glance their many-twinkling feet.
Slow-melting strains their queen's approach
declare:

Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime,5 that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
The bloom of young desire, and purple light of
love.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race what ills await,
Labour, and penury, the racks of pain,
Disease, and sorrow's weeping train,

And death, sad refuge from the storms of fate!
The fonde complaint, my song, disprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,
He gives to range the dreary sky:
Tilf down the eastern cliffs afar
Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering
shafts of war.

II. 2

In climes beyond the solar road, Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,

The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.
And oft, beneath the odorous shade
Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat
In loose numbers wildly sweet

Every shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured deep a solemn sound:

Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant-power,
And coward vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled
coast.

III. 1

Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.
This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;

Of horror that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.

III. 2.

Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of ecstacy, The secrets of th' abyss to spy.

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:

The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,7
Where angels tremble, while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereal race,s
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-
resounding pace.

III. 3

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where 'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous shame,
Th' unconquerable mind, and freedom's
flame.

O lyre divine, what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban Eagle10 bear
Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro' the azure deep of air:

Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray
With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun:

7 Ezekiel i. 26

8"Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes." (Gray). 9 Job xxxix, 19

10 Pindar

Fuarfed wild! she raised the nightly song; she knew that my soul was a stream, that flowed at pleasant sounds. "Who looks," she said, "from his rock on ocean's closing mist? His long locks, like the raven's wing, are wander ing on the blast. Stately are his steps in grief! The tears are in his eyes! His manly breast is heaving over his bursting soul! Retire, I am distant far; a wanderer in lands unknown. Though the race of kings are around me, yet my soul is dark. Why have our fathers been foes, Ton-thormod, love of maids?"

"Soft voice of the streamy isle," I said, "why dost thou mourn by night? The race of daring Trenmor are not the dark in soul. Thou shalt not wander, by streams unknown, blue-eyed Oina-morul! Within this bosom is a voice; it comes not to other ears: it bids Ossian hear the hapless, in their hour of woe. Retire, soft singer by night! Ton-thormod shall not mourn on his rock!"

for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun! in the strength of thy youth: Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey.

THOMAS CHATTERTON*

(1752-1770)

EPITAPH ON ROBERT CANYNGE

Thys Morneynge Starre of Radeleves rysynge Raie,

hyghte,1

Benethe thys Stone lies moltrynge ynto Claie, Untylle the darke Tombe sheene an aeterne Lyghte.

Such were the deeds of Ossian, while yet his locks were young: though loveliness, with a robe of beams, clothed the daughter of many isles. We call back, maid of Lutha, the years that have rolled away!

FROM CARTHON

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth, in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone: who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall: the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again: the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art for ever the same; rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests; when thunder rolls, and lightning flies; thou lookest in thy 5 The Hall of Odin.

Thyrde from hys Loyns the present Canynge came; †

Houton are wordes for to telle his doe; 3
For aie shall lyve hys Heaven-recorded Name,
Ne shalle ytte die whanne Tyme shall be ne
moe; 4

Whan Mychael's Trompe shall sounde to rize the Soulle,

3 deeds 4 no more

1 named
2 hollow
*The "Rowley poems" of Chatterton. ascribed by
him to a fictitious priest called Rowley, of the
fifteenth century, are written in a spurious
archaic dialect, not a few of the forms being
pure inventions, sometimes merely for con-
venience of rhyme. In the selections here
given (except the Epitaph, which is left un-
altered) the spelling and some words are mod-
ernized, in accordance with Professor Skeat's
edition.
to
the better
show what genuine
powers the youthful poet possessed. Chatter-
ton wrote after this fashion:

"In Virgyne the sweltrie sun gan sheene,
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie:
The apple rodded from its palie greene," etc.
This Spenserian manner, as in the poetry of
Thomson a generation earlier. is in marked
contrast to the prevailing classicism of the
age. See Eng. Lit., p. 223.

William Canning, an actual mayor of Bristol in the time of Edward IV., who with his grandfather rebuilt the beautiful church of St. Mary Redcliffe ("Radcleves rysynge Rale"). It does not appear that the great-grandfather, Robert, had any share in it. William Canning was asserted by Chatterton to have been Rowley's patron.