Works of Thomas Gray

Walpole's other cat may have been a tortoise-shell, and therefore Gray would describe this—the handsome one— as vying with her in beauty, and purring with pleasure at the sight of it. Or it may be he wrote so as to be right whichever cat it was; if we take "tabby kind" as equivalent to "cat-kind," the Ode will be applicable to a tortoise-shell cat. See the Explanation of the Designs in the edition of , quoted after the Notes, infra. Nor all, that glisters, gold. Like many another phrase or saying adopted by Gray, this has been given greater currency from being in his oft-read poems.

It occurs in several old poets before Gray: It also occurs in Shakespeare and Dryden: In the "Collection" of , A foe to fish. Looks— in the Wharton MS. In the Walpole MS. Pembroke and Wharton MSS. Cooper at the Globe in Pater-noster Row, In the Pembroke MS. Antique, Ancient; "antique" is now applied to old-fashioned things, and would not be used of a building. Milton spells it antic, and probably Gray took the epithet from the line in "Il Penseroso": Because they do not still afford him the sensations he had as a "careless" boy; there is also a reference to the recent death of his school friend, West.

With the apostrophe to Father Thames and what follows compare the following lines from Green's "Grotto," the poem Gray said he had in mind when writing the "Ode on the Spring": Completely; an adverb, 'em. This abbreviation of them, or perhaps a survival of the O. Murder was formerly also spelt murther , d and th being in many words interchangeable, e.

Murtherous is a very expressive form, and suits the rhythm of the line better; he uses it again in the "Ode for Music," Wotton, Provost of Eton, the summer before his death visited Winchester College where he had been educated, and when he was returning to Eton, he made the following reflections, as given in his Life by Isaac Walton: But age and experience have taught me that these were but empty hopes; for I now always found it true, as my Saviour did foretell, 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Thus one generation succeeds another in their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death. Gray adds a second printed only in Lackington's edition, It profits to learn discretion through suffering. In three places in this stanza Gray borrows from "Paradise Lost": Almost all editors have a comma after maid, but there is none in any of the editions of this Ode printed in Gray's lifetime.

In the margin of the Pembroke MS. Gray has written opposite this line, "[Greek line omitted ]. Mitford, Palgrave, Gosse, Ward, Rolfe and others wrongly read "Not" for "Nor," and have a full stop at end of line Your followers who are of a "philosophic mind," and have learned that "sweet are the uses of adversity. There is probably an allusion here to Walpole's disagreement with Gray, on their travels a year previously, and Gray's regret for it.

Wharton , observing "If this be as tedious to you as it is grown to me, I shall be sorry that I sent it to you. The little quarto volume of twenty-one pages was published on the 8th of August—the first issue of Horace Walpole's printing press—with an engraving of Strawberry Hill , and the following title: Printed at Strawberry Hill, for R. Gray quotes incorrectly from the Prayer Book version of Psalm lvii. This is equivalent to "lyre of Pindar.

Milton's "Vacation Exercise," This compound is taken from Milton; the whole passage in which the following lines occur should be read: This expression occurs in verses attributed to Shakespeare: Horace Walpole , in describing the famous Boccapadugli eagle, of Greek sculpture, says "Mr. Gray has drawn the flagging wing. Idalium, in Cyprus, where there was a temple sacred to the worship of Venus. She was also called Cytherea, from Cythera, an island off the coast of Laconia, where she was said to have landed when she rose from the foam of the sea.

Gray prints velvet-green, and has several similar compounds, e. Johnson objected to the use of velvet, on the ground that Nature should not borrow from Art; but Gray follows Shakespeare and other poets: An incorrectly formed compound; but it occurs in Thomson's "Spring" The phrase is in "Paradise Lost," ii. He permits; a Latinism. See "Ode for Music," Mitford noted that "the couplet from Cowley was wrongly quoted by Gray, and so continued by his different editors;" but he himself did not give the lines correctly.

Gray was fond of reproducing a word or phrase that pleased him; in his Journal of his Tour in the Lake District he writes under Oct. See, espy; without the idea of secrecy now always attaching to it; see "Paradise Lost," iv. Equivalent to "of armed men in battle array;" the rays of the sun being compared to the spears and other shining weapons of an army. Rolfe quotes from Lowell: In "Agrippina" Gray has "the glittering front of war. The Maeander, proverbial for its wandering course, flowed through Phrygia, into the Icarian Sea. Miletus, on the Maeander, was the birth-place of Thales and other Greek philosophers; but the reference is probably suggested by Milton's lines: With lines , compare Byron's: Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their Sun, is set.

Each old poetic Mountain. Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays.

Far from the sun , etc. In the more northern clime of England—far from sunny Italy. Mitford quotes from Cleveland: Knowledge of Greek and Latin being the recognized learning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Shakespeare having little of it, he is often spoken of as deriving his knowledge from Nature; see in particular Ben Jonson's lines "To the Memory of Shakespeare: Nature herself was proud of his designs. And in Milton "l'Allegro," Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood notes wild.

Paint-brush; an old use of the word, from Lat.

The Child stretched forth , etc. Mitford quotes from Sandys' Ovid, "Metam. Coursers , horses; literally, runners. There is an allusion to the fabulous winged horse Pegasus, associated with poetic inspiration. Yet shall he mount. In the last three lines, Gray expresses his own feelings and character, his pride, and, at the same time, his retiring disposition, vulgar , ordinary, common. Awake, my lyre; my glory, wake. With torrent rapture, see it pour. Hurls at their flying rear his glitt'ring shafts of war. Hurls o'er their scatter'd rear his glitt'ring shafts of war. Hurls o'er their shadowy rear his glitt'ring shafts of war.

Buried—in the margin of the MS. Dull in the margin of the Pembroke MS. Murmured a celestial sound. Terror in the margin of the Pembroke MS. Yet never can he fear a vulgar fate. In a letter, dated August 6, , Gray sent Dr. Wharton the first part of "The Bard," and on the 21st August a bit more of the "Prophecy" from line 57 to the end, but unfinished in places.

In May, , in a letter to Mason, he states that Parry, the Welsh harper, had been at Cambridge, and his "ravishing blind harmony" and "tunes of a thousand years old" had put the "Odikle" in motion again, and that he had then completed it, and he concluded his letter with the last two stanzas. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its foot.

Rough and uneven-looking, owing to being covered with trees. Milton applies the epithet to hills: Hoel is called high-born, being the son of Owen Gwynedd, prince of North Wales. He was one of his father's generals in his wars against the English, Flemings, and Normans, in South Wales; and was a famous bard, as his poems that are extant testify.

Llewellyn was a French Prince who was killed in the wars with Edward I. He was also a poet. In contemporary poets he is described as the "tender-hearted" and "mild" Llewellyn; so soft should be taken with Llewellyn and not with lay. Cadwallo and Urien are Welsh bards, but none of their poems are now extant.

See Southey's "Madoc in Wales. Plinlimmon , a mountain on the borders of Cardigan and Glamorgan. The lines mean that even the lofty mountain bent to listen to his song. Caernarvon, Caer in Arvon, the camp in Arvon. From this line down to the end of line , the "lost companions" of the bard "join in harmony" with him, and then disappear, and he continues the prophecy alone. This is clearly indicated in all the editions published in Gray's lifetime; in these each line spoken by the bard alone— 1 to 8 and 23 to 48 —begins with a single inverted comma, and there is one at the end of line Then from line 49 to there are two inverted commas at the beginning of each line, and two at the end of line ; and, again, one inverted comma at each line from to , which also ends with one.

In Wakefield's edition and Lackington's , the marks are correct. Mason is also correct, and all reprints I have seen of his editions, except that the two inverted commas at the end of line are placed within the bracket. But in Mitford's edition , the commas at the end of line are omitted, and in other respects the portion of the poem from line 23 to is printed as if an uninterrupted speech by the bard alone.

Mitford incorrectly reads "Berkeley's roof. For the events of Edward the Second's reign, the faithlessness of his wife, Isabella of France, the treason of Mortimer, and the cruel death of the king, read the "Student's Hume," chap, ix. The expression seems to have been taken from Hume's description: Suffering agony; more commonly used as a transitive verb: There is a note of interrogation at this line, and the question may be supplied thus: He has the same metaphors in "Agrippina": Fair laughs the Morn, etc.

These lines may be paraphrased thus: No thought is there of the whirlwind that lies silently in wait to sweep away the prey which at sunset must be his. In his "Biographia Literaria" p. How like a prodigal doth she return, With over-weathered ribs, and ragged sails, Lean, rent, and beggared by the strumpet wind! I mention this because in referring various lines in Gray to their original in Shakespeare and Milton—and in the clear perception how completely all the propriety was lost in the transfer—I was, at that early period, led to a conjecture which, many years afterwards, was recalled to me from the same thought having been started in conversation, but far more ably and developed more fully, by Mr.

Wordsworth, namely, that this style of poetry, which I have characterized above as translations of prose thoughts into poetic language, had been kept up, if it did not wholly arise from, the custom of writing Latin verses, and the great importance attached to these exercises in our public schools. Above and below in the loom we intertwine the roses, to be united by the marriage of Henry VII. He is represented as guilty of their murder, and is under the shade of the united roses, having been slain at the battle of Bosworth. Half of thy heart. Horace's "animae dimidium meae," "Ode" I.

Tennyson alludes to the story of Eleanor's devotion to her husband in his "Dream of Fair Women": A skirt is the edge or lower part of a garment; cf. Webster, the American orator, introduced this passage thus, "Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul! All hail, ye genuine Kings.

None of the annotators have noted the point in this couplet and in the remainder of the bard's song, though Gray hints at it in his note on line Hitherto the bard has been denouncing the woes that were to befall the Plantagenet line, but on the extinction of the House of York he foresees visions of glory for his native land—not only was England to become a Welsh dependency, ruled by Welsh monarchs, but the race of the bards, that had been cut off by the ruthless Edward, is restored in Spencer and Shakespeare—a new era of bards under a sovereign of Welsh descent!

Britannia's issue and of the Briton-Line, are equivalent to "Welsh" the Kelts, original Britons, having been driven into Wales. He has it in the same sense in "Agrippina": Of the Briton-Line, i. Mitford refers to Congreve's "Ode to Lord Godolphin": Warble is a favourite word of Gray's for song or verse—whether of birds or poets.

He seems to have taken it like many another word or phrase from Milton; in "l'Allegro" Shakespeare is said to " Warble his native wood-notes wild. This seems borrowed from Milton: The bright beams of light. The Bard is still addressing Edward, and says he rejoices at the different doom that awaits the king and himself—the evil that is to fall on the house of the monarch and his descendants, and the triumph of his own poetical descendants in the persons of the Elizabethan poets.

Hovered in the noontide ray. Mirrors of Saxon truth and loyalty Your helpless, old, expiring master view! Yet thou, proud boy, from Pomfret's walls shall send A sigh, and envy oft thy happy grandsire's end. A smile of horror. Me unblessed, unpitied, here. No more our long lost, etc. Youthful knights, and barons bold With dazzling helm, and horrent spear. This Ode was written in , and first published as the seventh in the Poems of In a letter to Beattie , 1st February, , Gray states that his "sole reason" for publishing this and the following odes is "to make up for the omission of the Long Story," which he did not include in his poems in The Ode is a translation or paraphrase from the Norwegian, the original being an Icelandic court poem written about , entitled "Darradar Liod, or the Lay of Darts.

There is also a Latin version, referred to by Gray. The friend referred to in the advertisement was Mason, and the "design was dropped" on his hearing that Thomas Warton was engaged on a History of English Poetry. The title in the Pembroke MS. With the weaving here and in the "Bard" compare the paraphrase of the gipsy's song in "Guy Mannering": Now they wax and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle," etc. The names of the sisters in the original are Hilda, Hiorthrimula, Sangrida, and Swipula. Gray prints and spells thus—desart-beach.

The meaning of this verse is that the tribe which has hitherto been confined to the sea-coast shall rule over rich provinces in the interior of Ireland. These lines are not in the original. The reference to Scotland is explained in the Preface. Triumph is struck out and 'conquer' in the margin, Pembroke MS. Hurry, hurry to the field.

This Ode, as well as the preceding and the following one, was first published in the edition of Mitford follows the original title in the Wharton MS. The first five stanzas of this Ode are omitted; in which Balder, one of the sons of Odin, was informed that he should soon die. Upon his communication of his dream, the other gods, finding it true, by consulting the oracles, agreed to ward off the approaching danger, and sent Frigga to exact an oath from every thing not to injure Balder.

She, however, overlooked the mistletoe, with a branch of which he was afterwards slain by Hoder, at the instigation of Lok. After the execution of this commission, Odin, still alarmed for the life of his son, called another council; and hearing nothing but divided opinions among the gods, to consult the Prophetess "he up-rose with speed. The first five stanzas are given in S. Jones' edition of Gray. Hela, in the Edda, is described with a dreadful countenance, and her body half flesh-colour, and half blue. The Edda gives this dog the name of Managarmar.

He fed upon the lives of those that were to die. In a little poem called the "Magic of Odin" Bartholinus, p. When I see magicians travelling through the air, I disconcert them with a single look, and force them to abandon their enterprise. The original word is Valgalldr; from Valr , mortuus, and Galldr, incantatio. Odin we find both from this Ode and the Edda was solicitous about the fate of his son, Balder, who had dreamed he was soon to die. Women were looked upon by the Gothic nations as having a peculiar insight into futurity; and some there were that made profession of magic arts and divination.

These travelled round the country, and were received in every house with great respect and honour. Such a woman bore the name of Volva, Seidkona, or Spakona. The dress of Thorbiorga, one of these prophetesses, is described at large in Eirik's "Rauda Sogu" apud Bartholin, lib. She had on a blue vest spangled all over with stones, a necklace of glass beads, and a cap made of the skin of a black lamb lined with white cat-skin. She leaned on a staff adorned with brass, with a round head set with stones; and was girt with an Hunlandish belt, at which hung her pouch full of magical instruments.

Her buskins were of rough calf-skin, bound on with thongs studded with knobs of brass, and her gloves of white cat-skin, the fur turned inwards, etc. They were also called Fiolkyngi, or Fiolkunnug, i. See Matthew Arnold's "Balder Dead," These were the Norns or Fates, invisible to mortals; so by recognizing them Odin revealed his divinity.

Various Readings in the Wharton MS. Prophetess, my call obey, Once again arise and say. Once again my call obey, Prophetess, arise and say. Who th' Avenger, etc. These verses are transposed in the Wharton MS. The mightiest of the mighty line. The original Welsh of the above poem was the composition of Gwalchmai, the son of Melir, immediately after Prince Owen Gwynedd had defeated the combined fleets of Iceland, Denmark, and Norway, which had invaded his territory on the coast of Anglesea.

There is likewise another poem which describes this famous battle, written by Prince Howel, the son of Owen Gwynedd. The Danish fleet sails on the shadow it makes in the water. Canning, in his celebrated simile, speaks of "those tremendous fabrics now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness.

Her stands for Lochlin, an army or fleet being often described by the name of the country itself, long and gay agree with Lochlin. See Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," vi. A red dragon was the device Owen wore. Moelfre, a small bay on the north-east coast of Anglesea.

Thomas Gray books

After line 26 there are the four following lines in the MS. Checked by the torrent-tide of blood, Backward Meinai rolls his flood; While, heaped his master's feet around, Prostrate warriors gnaw the ground. From this line to the end is Gray's amplification rather than a translation, very little of it being in the original, which closes as follows: Marking with indignant looks those who were afraid to stop, or ashamed to fly.

This is a peculiar use of the abstract for the concrete. Marking agrees with he. In the winter of , after the death of his aunt, Mary Antrobus, Gray resumed it at Cambridge , and finished it at Stoke early in June, ; and on the 12th of that month he sent a copy of it in MS. On the 10th of February, , Gray received a letter from the editors of the "Magazine of Magazines," asking permission to publish it. He thereupon wrote next day to Walpole, as follows: Yesterday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen as their bookseller expresses it , who have taken the 'Magazine of Magazines' into their hands.

They tell me that an ingenious Poem, called 'Reflections in a Country Church-yard,' has been communicated to them, which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the excellent author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his indulgence, but the honour of his correspondence, etc.

The poetical works: of Thomas Gray. With the life of the author.

As I am not at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent as they desire, 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, 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 Church-yard.

If you behold the 'Magazine of Magazines' in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may as well let it alone. Dodsley in Pall-Mall; and sold by M.

Thomas Gray

Cooper in Pater-Noster Row. It was anonymous, and contained these prefatory remarks by Walpole: It is this Approbation which makes it unnecessary for me to make any Apology but to the Author: As he cannot but feel some Satisfaction in having pleas'd so many Readers already, I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that Pleasure to many more. The poem was at once reproduced in the magazines; it appeared in the "Magazine of Magazines" on the 28th of February, in the "London Magazine" and in the "Scots' Magazine," on the 31st of March, and in the "Grand Magazine of Magazines" on the 30th of April.

Gray has entered the following note in the margin of the Pembroke MS.: Bentley's Designs, of wch. Mason says that Gray "originally gave it only the simple title of 'Stanzas written in a Country Church-yard,'" but that he "persuaded him first to call it an Elegy, because the subject authorized him so to do, and the alternate measure seemed particularly fit for that species of composition; also so capital a poem written in this measure, would as it were appropriate it in future to writings of this sort.

Peter's College, Cambridge, and a friend of Gray's , who, at his death in , left the greater portion to Pembroke College, and the remainder to his friend Mr. Bright,—each set containing a copy of the "Elegy. The collection left to Mr. Bright was sold by auction in ; the MS. Rolfe calls this the "Fraser MS. Gosse refers to it as the "Mason MS. The curfew was a bell, or the ringing of a bell, rung at eight o'clock in the evening for putting out fires Fr.

The word continued to be applied to an evening bell long after the law for putting out fires ceased, but it is not now so used, and the word would have become obsolete but for Gray's use of it here, and when one speaks of the curfew one thinks of the first line of the "Elegy. Gray quotes in original the lines from Dante which suggested this line.

Cary's translation is as follows: This is the correct reading, as, though winds occur in the first printed edition , wind is what Gray has in the MS. After the first edition I find with winds is Stephen Jones' , and though Mitford in his edition of has wind, in the Aldine edition he has winds, and is followed—without comment—by almost all subsequent editors of Gray's "Poems," and in popular reprints of the "Elegy.

The yew-tree under which Gray often sat in Stoke churchyard still exists there; it is on the south side of the church, its branches spread over a large circumference, and under it as well as under its shade there are several graves. Wakefield quotes from Parnell's "Night Piece on Death" Throughout the "Elegy" he refers to the poor, the people of the hamlet, as contrasted with the rich, who were interred and had their monuments inside the church.

This stanza and the ninth form the inscription on the east side of the monument to Gray in Stoke Park. Sending forth fragrant smells. The cock's shrill clarion. A clarion is a wind instrument, a kind of trumpet, with a shrill sound, from Lat. It is from Milton that he takes clarion for the sound of the cock's crow: In the original MS. The huntsman's horn, that wakens echoes. The humble bed in which they have been sleeping.

Lloyd in his Latin translation strangely mistook "lowly bed" for the grave. The following are parallel passages: Be busied at her household duties. Some annotators take exception to this use of ply; but it is a shortened form of apply similarly used by Milton and old writers: The expression is a good instance of the poetical language against which Wordsworth protested. When he had occasion to refer to a similar scene, he wrote: Luke quotes from Gay's "Fables": Milton's expression, "we drove afield," "Lycidas," Wakefield quotes from Spenser's "Shepherd's Kalendar": This, like many another line in the "Elegy," may be said to be part of the English language; it was "chiselled for immortality.

This stanza is the second of the two on the east side of the monument, vide note on Hurd refers to these lines in his note on the following passage in Cowley: Death mows down all with an impartial hand. This is Gray's reading in his MSS. Scott of Amwell in his "Critical Essay" on the "Elegy," published in , writes in a footnote: But as in the editions of the "Elegy" in , "corrected by the author," and in his last edition, , Gray prints awaits, it is clear that he intended it to be so retained; besides, it is better to take "inevitable hour" as the subject of "awaits," and not "boast," "pomp," etc.

Clarke," 11 ; and "Shakespeare Verses," 8. In Hayley's "Life of Crashaw," in the Biographia Britannica, it is said that this line is "literally translated from the Latin prose of Bartholinus in his Danish Antiquities. These words occur together in Shakespeare: Full of heaven-sent inspiration; cf. Cowper has the expression in "Boadicea": He first wrote reins; and changed it probably because Tickell has it in his lines on the death of Addison "To Earl Warwick": Various originals have been cited for this famous stanza, but often as the thought may have occurred before Gray it is in the form in which he has worded it that it is known the world over.

Gray introduces "the gem and the flower" in his "Ode at the Installation" written nearly twenty years later thus: This line occurs in Churchill's "Gotham," ii. For the allusions to Hampden , Milton , and Cromwell , the student should refer to a History. Instead of these three names there are, in the Original MS. Chalfont, in which is the cottage where Milton finished "Paradise Lost," is only a few miles from the "Churchyard" of the "Elegy.

To scatter plenty, etc. Mitford quotes a line from Tickell, and one from Mrs. Behn containing these expressions; but Gray repeats what he wrote in "Education and Government": The early poems and translations of Gray, unpublished in his lifetime, and now so little read, are like a storehouse from which he took thoughts and expressions for the "Odes" and "Elegy. This is in Shakespeare, "Winter's Tale," iv.

Genuine, natural; the "in" has not a negative force. After this verse, in the Original MS. Rogers quotes from one of Drummond's "Sonnets": Gray has it in "Agrippina," 83, already quoted. Gray had probably in mind that under the yew-tree there is a tombstone with several words wrongly spelt and some letters ill-formed, and that even in the inscription which he composed for his aunt's tomb the word resurrection is spelt incorrectly by the unlettered stone-cutter.

This stanza is capable of two constructions, according as we take prey in agreement with who or with being. I prefer the former: If prey be taken with being, then "to dumb Forgetfulness a prey" is the completion of the predicate resigned, and we have two questions asked: The For refers to what has gone before, lines ; even to these poor rustics there are memorials that ask for the sympathy of the passer-by, because who ever left the world without a regretful look and a desire to be remembered? Gray probably took this expression from "Paradise Lost," iii.

This stanza may be regarded as an answer to the question in the last: When dying one rests on some loving friend, and needs the tears of affection; and even after one is buried the same natural desire for loving remembrance shows itself; and when all is dust and ashes the fire that was accustomed to be in those ashes lives in them and finds expression in the inscription on the tombs.

Here Mitford quotes Drayton and Pope: The translation by Nott of the lines Gray quotes from Petrarch is: Still more closely does line 92 resemble one in Chaucer, in the "Reeve's Prologue," speaking of old men not forgetting the passions of their youth: It has been suggested that the first line of this stanza seems to regard the near approach of death; the second, its actual advent; the third, the time immediately succeeding its advent; the fourth, a time still later. This stanza is altered from the second of the rejected stanzas quoted above as coming after line 72 in the Original MS.

Both here and in the "Installation Ode" Gray has Milton's expressions in view: And in the "Installation Ode" he puts the following words into Milton's mouth,— dawn rhyming as here with lawn — "Oft at the blush of dawn I trod your level lawn. After this stanza there is the following in the Original MS.: In a footnote the reviewer of Mason's edition of Gray's Poems, in the "Gentleman's Magazine," June, , says Gray plainly alludes to this stanza and this evening employment when in a subsequent stanza he mentions not only the customed hill, etc.

It is " at the foot " of a beech that Gray describes himself as "squatting," in a letter to Walpole already quoted, note on line 17 of the "Ode on the Spring" , and there he "grows to the trunk for a whole morning. Mitford prints "woful-wan," but in the printed copies published in Gray's lifetime the line stands as in this edition, woful wan means sad and pale, not "wofully pale.

Along the heath , the reference is to the heath mentioned in the rejected stanza which came after line These two stanzas form the inscription on the monument to Gray, in Stoke Park, on the side that faces the church. Shakespeare has the phrase in "Midsummer Night's Dream": Gray may not have taken the words from Shakespeare; the graveyard at Stoke-Poges is reached by paths leading from the road; and it is one of these paths rather than a path in the graveyard that is referred to.

Hales considers that these words are introduced because "reading was not such a common accomplishment then that it could be taken for granted"; and Mr. Rolfe says "the 'hoary-headed swain' of course could not read. Instruct me for thou knowest. Opposite this stanza in the Pembroke MS. Gray has written "Omitted, Also he may have noted the resemblance it bears to some expressions and lines in Collins' "Dirge in Cymbeline " pub. The red-breast oft, at evening hours, Shall kindly lend its little aid," etc. This line has become a hackneyed quotation.

Brocket, the tutor of Sir James Lowther. In December, , Dr. Wharton, which abound, according to Mr. From the narrative of his friend, Mr. He wrote copious marginal notes to the works of Linnaeus, and other writers in the three kingdoms of nature: Temple, Rector of St. In addition to this character, Mr. A dead lord ranks with commoners: Of his other lyric pieces, Mr.

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This Ode is extracted from the Gododin. University of O xford T ext A rchive. O xford T ext A rchive: With the life of the author. Embellished with superb engravings. In pomp of [ Damp'd by the Laden hand of com [ Oft' when the curfew tells its parting kne [ Gray's surviving letters also show his sharp observation and playful sense of humour. He is well known for his phrase, "where ignorance is bliss , 'tis folly to be wise. Gray is not promoting ignorance, but is reflecting with nostalgia on a time when he was allowed to be ignorant, his youth It has been asserted that the Ode also abounds with images which find "a mirror in every mind".

The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo". He spoke in the language of "public" and "private" and according to Johnson, he should have spoken more in his private language as he did in his "Elegy" poem. Pindaric odes are to be written with fire and passion, unlike the calmer and more reflective Horatian odes such as Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College. The Bard tells of a wild Welsh poet cursing the Norman king Edward I after his conquest of Wales and prophesying in detail the downfall of the House of Plantagenet.

It is melodramatic, and ends with the bard hurling himself to his death from the top of a mountain. When his duties allowed, Gray travelled widely throughout Britain to places such as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Scotland and most notably the Lake District see his Journal of a Visit to the Lake District in in search of picturesque landscapes and ancient monuments. These elements were not generally valued in the early 18th century, when the popular taste ran to classical styles in architecture and literature, and most people liked their scenery tame and well-tended. Gray's connection to the Romantic poets is vexed.

In the prefaces to the and editions of Wordsworth's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's Lyrical Ballads , Wordsworth singled out Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West" to exemplify what he found most objectionable in poetry, declaring it was. Gray wrote in a letter to West, that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry. Gray died on 30 July in Cambridge, and was buried beside his mother in the churchyard of St.

Giles' church in Stoke Poges , the setting for his famous Elegy.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Thomas Gray disambiguation. This article includes a list of references , but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. June Learn how and when to remove this template message. Portrait by John Giles Eccardt , — Retrieved 15 April A Cambridge Alumni Database. Macmillan, , p. Retrieved 24 December The Wall Street Journal.

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The Broadview Anthology of British Literature.