Chapter 5

"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 the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum."

and _Macbeth_, iii. 2:

"Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night's yawning peal," etc.

10. _The moping owl_. Mitford quotes Ovid, _Met._ v. 550: "Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, _Winter_, 114:

"Assiduous in his bower the wailing owl Plies his sad song;"

and Mallet, _Excursion_:

"the wailing owl Screams solitary to the mournful moon."

12. _Her ancient solitary reign_. Cf. Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 476: "desertaque regna pastorum." A MS. variation of this line mentioned by Mitford is, "Molest and pry into her ancient reign."

13. "As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. Tennyson (_In Mem._ x.) speaks of resting

'beneath the clover sod That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God.'

In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in the first instance, for two reasons: (i.) the interior of the church was regarded as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place in it, the most dearly coveted spot being near the high altar; (ii.) when elaborate tombs were the fashion, they were built inside the church for the sake of security, 'gay tombs' being liable to be 'robb'd' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's _White Devil_). As these two considerations gradually ceased to have power, and other considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the inside of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral reasons gave no choice" (Hales).

17. Cf. Milton, _Arcades_, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" _P. L._ ix. 192:

"Now when as sacred light began to dawn In Eden on the humid flowers that breath'd Their morning incense," etc.

18. Hesiod ([Greek: Erg.] 568) calls the swallow [Greek: orthogoê chelidôn.] Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ viii. 455:

"Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma, Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus."

19. _The cock's shrill clarion_. Cf. Philips, _Cyder_, i. 753:

"When chanticleer with clarion shrill recalls The tardy day;"

Milton, _P. L._ vii. 443:

"The crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours;"

_Hamlet_, i. 1:

"The cock that is the trumpet to the morn;"

Quarles, _Argalus and Parthenia_:

"I slept not till the early bugle-horn Of chaunticlere had summon'd in the morn;"

and Thomas Kyd, _England's Parnassus_:

"The cheerful cock, the sad night's trumpeter, Wayting upon the rising of the sunne; The wandering swallow with her broken song," etc.

20. _Their lowly bed_. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave--a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter."

21. Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894:

"Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent;"

and Horace, _Epod._ ii. 39:

"Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvet Domum atque dulces liberos * * * * * * * Sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum Lassi sub adventum viri," etc.

Mitford quotes Thomson, _Winter_, 311:

"In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence."

Wakefield cites _The Idler_, 103: "There are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, _this is the last_."

22. _Ply her evening care_. Mitford says, "To _ply a care_ is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme _share_." Hales remarks: "This is probably the kind of phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the _Elegy_ unintelligible. Compare his own

'And she I cherished _turned her wheel_ Beside an English fire.'"

23. _No children run_, etc. Hales quotes Burns, _Cotter's Saturday Night_, 21:

"Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee."

24. Among Mitford's MS. variations we find "coming kiss." Wakefield compares Virgil, _Geo._ ii. 523:

"Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;"

and Mitford adds from Dryden,

"Whose little arms about thy legs are cast, And climbing for a kiss prevent their mother's haste."

Cf. Thomson, _Liberty_, iii. 171:

"His little children climbing for a kiss."

26. _The stubborn glebe_. Cf. Gay, _Fables_, ii. 15:

"'Tis mine to tame the stubborn glebe."

_Broke_=broken, as often in poetry, especially in the Elizabethan writers. See Abbott, _Shakes. Gr._ 343.

27. _Drive their team afield_. Cf. _Lycidas_, 27: "We drove afield;" and Dryden,_ Virgil's Ecl._ ii. 38: "With me to drive afield."

28. _Their sturdy stroke_. Cf. Spenser, _Shep. Kal._ Feb.:

"But to the roote bent his sturdy stroake, And made many wounds in the wast [wasted] Oake;"

and Dryden, _Geo._ iii. 639:

"Labour him with many a sturdy stroke."

30. As Mitford remarks, _obscure_ and _poor_ make "a very imperfect rhyme;" and the same might be said of _toil_ and _smile_.

33. Mitford suggests that Gray had in mind these verses from his friend West's _Monody on Queen Caroline_:

"Ah, me! what boots us all our boasted power, Our golden treasure, and our purple state; They cannot ward the inevitable hour, Nor stay the fearful violence of fate."

Hurd compares Cowley:

"Beauty, and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power, Have their short flourishing hour; And love to see themselves, and smile, And joy in their pre-eminence a while: Even so in the same land Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers together stand; Alas! Death mows down all with an impartial hand."

35. _Awaits_. The reading of the ed. of 1768, as of the Pembroke (and probably the other) MS. _Hour_ is the subject, not the object, of the verb.

36. Hayley, in the Life of Crashaw, _Biographia Britannica_, says that this line is "literally translated from the Latin prose of Bartholinus in his Danish Antiquities."

39. _Fretted_. The _fret_ is, strictly, an ornament used in classical architecture, formed by small fillets intersecting each other at right angles. Parker (_Glossary of Architecture_) derives the word from the Latin _fretum_, a strait; and Hales from _ferrum_, iron, through the Italian _ferrata_, an iron grating. It is more likely (see Stratmann and Wb.) from the A. S. _frætu_, an ornament.

Cf. _Hamlet_, ii. 2:

"This majestical roof fretted with golden fire;"

and _Cymbeline_, ii. 4:

"The roof o' the chamber With golden cherubins is fretted."

40. _The pealing anthem_. Cf. _Il Penseroso_, 161:

"There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced quire below, In service high, and anthem clear," etc.

41. _Storied urn_. Cf. _Il Pens._ 159: "storied windows richly dight." On _animated bust_, cf. Pope, _Temple of Fame_, 73: "Heroes in animated marble frown;" and Virgil, _Æn._ vi. 847: "spirantia aera."

43. _Provoke_. Mitford considers this use of the word "unusually bold, to say the least." It is simply the etymological meaning, _to call forth_ (Latin, _provocare_). See Wb. Cf. Pope, _Ode_:

"But when our country's cause provokes to arms."

44. _Dull cold ear_. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. VIII._ iii. 2: "And sleep in dull, cold marble."

46. _Pregnant with celestial fire_. This phrase has been copied by Cowper in his _Boadicea_, which is said (see notes of "Globe" ed.) to have been written after reading Hume's History, in 1780:

"Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre."

47. Mitford quotes Ovid, _Ep._ v. 86:

"Sunt mihi quas possint sceptra decere manus."

48. _Living lyre_. Cf. Cowley:

"Begin the song, and strike the living lyre;"

and Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 281:

"Who now shall charm the shades where Cowley strung His living harp, and lofty Denham sung?"

50. Cf. Browne, _Religio Medici_: "Rich with the spoils of nature."

51. "_Rage_ is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 17th century, and in the 18th century writers, for inspiration, enthusiasm" (Hales). Cf. Cowley:

"Who brought green poesy to her perfect age, And made that art which was a rage?"

and Tickell, _Prol._:

"How hard the task! How rare the godlike rage!"

Cf. also the use of the Latin _rabies_ for the "divine afflatus," as in _Æneid_, vi. 49.

53. _Full many a gem_, etc. Cf. Bishop Hall, _Contemplations_: "There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowells of the earth, many a fair pearle in the bosome of the sea, that never was seene, nor never shall bee."

_Purest ray serene_. As Hales remarks, this is a favourite arrangement of epithets with Milton. Cf. _Hymn on Nativity_: "flower-inwoven tresses torn;" _Comus_: "beckoning shadows dire;" "every alley green," etc.; _L'Allegro_: "native wood-notes wild;" _Lycidas_: "sad occasion dear;" "blest kingdoms meek," etc.

55. _Full many a flower_, etc. Cf. Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, iv. 158:

"Like roses that in deserts bloom and die."

Mitford cites Chamberlayne, _Pharonida_, ii. 4:

"Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent Of odours in unhaunted deserts;"

and Young, _Univ. Pass._ sat. v.:

"In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race;"

and Philip, _Thule_:

"Like woodland flowers, which paint the desert glades, And waste their sweets in unfrequented shades."

Hales quotes Waller's

"Go, lovely rose, Tell her that's young And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide Thou must have uncommended died."

On _desert air_, cf. _Macbeth_, iv. 3: "That would be howl'd out in the desert air."

57. It was in 1636 that John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire (a cousin of Oliver Cromwell), refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I. was levying without the authority of Parliament.

58. _Little tyrant_. Cf. Thomson, _Winter_:

"With open freedom little tyrants raged."

The artists who have illustrated this passage (see, for instance, _Favourite English Poems_, p. 305, and _Harper's Monthly_, vol. vii. p. 3) appear to understand "little" as equivalent to _juvenile_. If that had been the meaning, the poet would have used some other phrase than "of his fields," or "his lands," as he first wrote it.

59. _Some mute inglorious Milton_. Cf. Phillips, preface to _Theatrum Poetarum_: "Even the very names of some who having perhaps been comparable to Homer for heroic poesy, or to Euripides for tragedy, yet nevertheless sleep inglorious in the crowd of the forgotten vulgar."

60. _Some Cromwell_, etc. Hales remarks: "The prejudice against Cromwell was extremely strong throughout the 18th century, even amongst the more liberal-minded. That cloud of 'detractions rude,' of which Milton speaks in his noble sonnet to our 'chief of men' as in his own day enveloping the great republican leader, still lay thick and heavy over him. His wise statesmanship, his unceasing earnestness, his high-minded purpose, were not yet seen."

After this stanza Thomas Edwards, the author of the _Canons of Criticism_, would add the following, to supply what he deemed a defect in the poem:

"Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms Shone with attraction to herself alone; Whose beauty might have bless'd a monarch's arms, Whose virtue cast a lustre on a throne.

"That humble beauty warm'd an honest heart, And cheer'd the labours of a faithful spouse; That virtue form'd for every decent part The healthful offspring that adorn'd their house."

Edwards was an able critic, but it is evident that he was no poet.

63. Mitford quotes Tickell:

"To scatter blessings o'er the British land;"

and Mrs. Behn:

"Is scattering plenty over all the land."

66. _Their growing virtues_. That is, the growth of their virtues.

67. _To wade through slaughter_, etc. Cf. Pope, _Temp. of Fame_, 347:

"And swam to empire through the purple flood."

68. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. V._ iii. 3:

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up."

70. _To quench the blushes_, etc. Cf. Shakes. _W. T._ iv. 3:

"Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself."

73. _Far from the madding crowd's_, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond:

"Far from the madding worldling's hoarse discords."

Mitford points out "the ambiguity of this couplet, which indeed gives a sense exactly contrary to that intended; to avoid which one must break the grammatical construction." The poet's meaning is, however, clear enough.

75. Wakefield quotes Pope, _Epitaph on Fenton_:

"Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease, Content with science in the vale of peace."

77. _These bones_. "The bones of these. So _is_ is often used in Latin, especially by Livy, as in v. 22: '_Ea_ sola pecunia,' the money derived from that sale, etc." (Hales).

84. _That teach_. Mitford censures _teach_ as ungrammatical; but it may be justified as a "construction according to sense."

85. Hales remarks: "At the first glance it might seem that _to dumb Forgetfulness a prey_ was in apposition to _who_, and the meaning was, 'Who that now lies forgotten,' etc.; in which case the second line of the stanza must be closely connected with the fourth; for the question of the passage is not 'Who ever died?' but 'Who ever died without wishing to be remembered?' But in this way of interpreting this difficult stanza (i.) there is comparatively little force in the appositional phrase, and (ii.) there is a certain awkwardness in deferring so long the clause (virtually adverbal though apparently coördinate) in which, as has just been noticed, the point of the question really lies. Perhaps therefore it is better to take the phrase _to dumb Forgetfulness a prey_ as in fact the completion of the predicate _resign'd_, and interpret thus: Who ever resigned this life of his with all its pleasures and all its pains to be utterly ignored and forgotten?=who ever, when resigning it, reconciled himself to its being forgotten? In this case the second half of the stanza echoes the thought of the first half."

We give the note in full, and leave the reader to take his choice of the two interpretations. For ourself, we incline to the first rather than the second. We prefer to take _to dumb Forgetfulness a prey_ as appositional and proleptic, and not as the grammatical complement of _resigned_: Who, yielding himself up a prey to dumb Forgetfulness, ever resigned this life without casting a longing, lingering look behind?

90. _Pious_ is used in the sense of the Latin _pius_. Ovid has "piae lacrimae." Mitford quotes Pope, _Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady_, 49:

"No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier; By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd."

"In this stanza," says Hales, "he answers in an exquisite manner the two questions, or rather the one question twice repeated, of the preceding stanza.... What he would say is that every one while a spark of life yet remains in him yearns for some kindly loving remembrance; nay, even after the spark is quenched, even when all is dust and ashes, that yearning must still be felt."

91, 92. Mitford paraphrases the couplet thus: "The voice of Nature still cries from the tomb in the language of the epitaph inscribed upon it, which still endeavours to connect us with the living; the fires of former affection are still alive beneath our ashes."

Cf. Chaucer, _C. T._ 3880:

"Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken."

Gray himself quotes Petrarch, _Sonnet_ 169:

"Ch'i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco, Fredda una lingua e due begli occhi chiusi, Rimaner doppo noi pien di faville,"

translated by Nott as follows:

"These, my sweet fair, so warns prophetic thought, Clos'd thy bright eye, and mute thy poet's tongue, E'en after death shall still with sparks be fraught,"

the "these" meaning his love and his songs concerning it. Gray translated this sonnet into Latin elegiacs, the last line being rendered,

"Ardebitque urna multa favilla mea."

93. On a MS. variation of this stanza given by Mitford, see p. 80, footnote.

95. _Chance_ is virtually an adverb here = perchance.

98. _The peep of dawn_. Mitford quotes _Comus_, 138:

"Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice morn, on the Indian steep From her cabin'd loop-hole peep."

99. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ v. 428:

"though from off the boughs each morn We brush mellifluous dews;"

and _Arcades_, 50:

"And from the boughs brush off the evil dew."

Wakefield quotes Thomson, _Spring_, 103:

"Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields, Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops From the bent brush, as through the verdant maze Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk."

100. _Upland lawn_. Cf. Milton, _Lycidas_, 25:

"Ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eyelids of the morn."

In _L'Allegro_, 92, we have "upland hamlets," where Hales thinks "upland=country, as opposed to town." He adds, "Gray in his _Elegy_ seems to use the word loosely for 'on the higher ground;' perhaps he took it from Milton, without quite understanding in what sense Milton uses it." We doubt whether Hales understands Milton here. It is true that _upland_ used to mean country, as _uplanders_ meant countrymen, and _uplandish_ countrified (see Nares and Wb.), but the other meaning is older than Milton (see Halliwell's _Dict. of Archaic Words_), and Johnson, Keightley, and others are probably right in considering "upland hamlets" an instance of it. Masson, in his recent edition of Milton (1875), explains the "upland hamlets" as "little villages among the slopes, away from the river-meadows and the hay-making."

101. As Mitford remarks, _beech_ and _stretch_ form an imperfect rhyme.

102. Luke quotes Spenser, _Ruines of Rome_, st. 28:

"Shewing her wreathed rootes and naked armes."

103. _His listless length_. Hales compares _King Lear_, i. 4: "If you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry." Cf. also _Brittain's Ida_ (formerly ascribed to Spenser, but rejected by the best editors), iii. 2:

"Her goodly length stretcht on a lilly-bed."

104. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 644: "divided by a babbling brook;" and Horace, _Od._ iii. 13, 15:

"unde loquaces Lymphae desiliunt tuae."

Wakefield quotes _As You Like It_, ii. 1:

"As he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this road."

105. _Smiling as in scorn_. Cf. Shakes. _Pass. Pilgrim_, 14:

"Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile, In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether."

and Skelton, _Prol. to B. of C._:

"Smylynge half in scorne At our foly."

107. _Woeful-wan_. Mitford says: "_Woeful-wan_ is not a legitimate compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they are, when released from the _handcuffs_ of the hyphen." The hyphen is not in the edition of 1768, and we should omit it if it were not found in the Pembroke MS.

Wakefield quotes Spenser, _Shep. Kal._ Jan.:

"For pale and wanne he was (alas the while!) May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke."

108. "_Hopeless_ is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way" (Hales).

109. _Custom'd_ is Gray's word, not _'custom'd_, as usually printed. See either Wb. or Worc. s. v. Cf. Milton, _Ep. Damonis_: "Simul assueta seditque sub ulmo."

114. _Churchway path_. Cf. Shakes. _M. N. D._ v. 2:

"Now it is the time of night, That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite In the churchway paths to glide."

115. _For thou canst read_. The "hoary-headed swain" of course could _not_ read.

116. _Grav'd_. The old form of the participle is _graven_, but _graved_ is also in good use. The old preterite _grove_ is obsolete.

117. _The lap of earth_. Cf. Spenser, _F. Q._ v. 7, 9:

"For other beds the Priests there used none, But on their mother Earths deare lap did lie;"

and Milton, _P. L._ x. 777:

"How glad would lay me down, As in my mother's lap!"

Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the pathetic sentence of Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ii. 63: "Nam terra novissime complexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, tum maxime, ut mater, operit."

123. _He gave to misery all he had, a tear_. This is the pointing of the line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of Mathias, who seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the recent editors, almost without exception) to,

"He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear."

This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment. If one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to try to make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not only thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as an illustration of it:

"His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live."

126. Mitford says that _Or_ in this line should be _Nor_. Yes, if "draw" is an imperative, like "seek;" no, if it is an infinitive, in the same construction as "to disclose." That the latter was the construction the poet had in mind is evident from the form of the stanza in the Wrightson MS., where "seek" is repeated:

"No farther seek his merits to disclose, Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode."

127. _In trembling hope_. Gray quotes Petrarch, _Sonnet_ 104: "paventosa speme." Cf. Lucan, _Pharsalia_, vii. 297: "Spe trepido;" Mallet, _Funeral Hymn_, 473:

"With trembling tenderness of hope and fear;"

and Beaumont, _Psyche_, xv. 314:

"Divided here twixt trembling hope and fear."

Hooker (_Eccl. Pol._ i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of things far removed."

ODE ON THE SPRING.

The original manuscript title of this ode was "Noontide." It was first printed in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 271, under the title of "Ode."

1. _The rosy-bosom'd Hours_. Cf. Milton, _Comus_, 984: "The Graces and the rosy-bosom'd Hours;" and Thomson, _Spring_, 1007:

"The rosy-bosom'd Spring To weeping Fancy pines."

The _Horæ_, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses of the seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented by "the dance of the Hours." They were often described, in connection with the Graces, Hebe, and Aphrodite, as accompanying with their dancing the songs of the Muses and the lyre of Apollo. Long after the time of Homer they continued to be regarded as the givers of the seasons, especially spring and autumn, or "Nature in her bloom and her maturity." At first there were only two Horæ, Thallo (or Spring) and Karpo (or Autumn); but later the number was three, like that of the Graces. In art they are represented as blooming maidens, bearing the products of the seasons.

2. _Fair Venus' train_. The Hours adorned Aphrodite (Venus) as she rose from the sea, and are often associated with her by Homer, Hesiod, and other classical writers. Wakefield remarks: "Venus is here employed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the source of creation and beauty."