it forbade them to hide the truth they knew, to control the blush which marked their frank shame and to sell their talents to the wealthy and the proud, as many a famous poet has done. Their real condition and character are indicated in the apt phrases of the next stanza: The madding crowd's ignoble strife, their sober wishes, the cool sequestered vale, the noiseless tenor of their way. After three stanzas descriptive of the pathetic memorial of unlettered grief, Gray gives another truth known to man wherever he breathes-the hesitation to face death, the longing for companionship even through the valley of the shadow. Now addressing us directly or at least calling upon some kindred spirit, he looks forward to his own death and burial. Should we ask for the thoughtful man, the meditative genius who wrote the artful, artless tale, some old patriarch of the region may tell us how he had seen the poet wandering solitary and alone in the early morning or resting wearily at noontide, or conning over his melancholy lines, hopeless and forlorn; how he had missed him one day and another and then how with solemn dirges he had seen him borne to the quiet spot where now in fact the poet Gray reposes. The epitaph the poet writes for himself follows; we may instinctively feel the sensitive soul, deprecating criticism, anxious to please but with out confiuence in himself. He lacked sympathy from his contemporaries and his lofty character suffered from lack of genial atmosphere and friendly appreciation. "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. . . . Gray's Elegy pleased instantly and eternally." -Lord Byron. 66 Gray's Elegy owes much of its popularity to its strain of verse; the strain of thought alone, natural and touching as it is, would never have impressed it upon the hearts of thousands and tens of thousands unless the diction and meter in which it was embodied had been perfectly in unison with it. Beattie ascribed its general reception to both causes. Neither cause would have sufficed for producing so general and extensive and permanent an effect unless the poem had been, in the full import of the word, harmonious." -Southey "The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning 'Yet even these bones' are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus it would have been vain to blame and useless to praise him.” -Johnson. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 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, Where heaves the turf in many a mold'ring 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 strawbuilt 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 a-field! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, |