Select Poems of Thomas Gray

Many editions of Gray have been published in the last fifty years, some of them very elegant, and some showing considerable editorial labor, but not one, so far as I am aware, c...

Ye distant spires! ye antique towers! That crown the watery glade, Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry's holy shade; And ye, that from the stately brow Of Windsor's he...

Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictur'd urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 110 But ah! 'tis heard no more---- O...

Hales, in his Introduction to the poem, remarks: "The _Elegy_ is perhaps the most widely known poem in our language. The reason of this extensive popularity is perhaps to be sou...

"Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst...

5. _The Attic warbler_. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the...

83. _The painful family of death_. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 118: "Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, _State of Innocence_, v. 1: "With all the numerous...

[Footnote 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 hi...

34. _Plinlimmon_. One of the loftiest of the Welsh mountains, being 2463 feet in height. It is really a group of mountains, three of which tower high above the others, and on ea...

"Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes; There, held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble, till With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast."