"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 105 "One morn I missed him on the customed hill, "The next, with dirges due, in sad array, ΙΙΟ Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 115 Graved on the stone beneath yon agéd thorn." The Epitaph Here rests his head upon the lap of earth Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ; He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode 120 125 (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God. NOTES ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD The evolution of the Elegy was very slow, for Gray spent about eight years perfecting its lines. Begun in 1742, the poem was not finished until 1750. Gray sent the poem, when completed, to his friend Horace Walpole, with a letter saying: "Having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it to you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it; a merit that most of my writings have wanted and are like to want." The Magazine of Magazines wished to publish the poem, but Gray desired to escape publicity. He therefore requested Walpole to have Dodsley, the famous London printer, publish the poem anonymously. The Elegy was accordingly published in February, 1751, in a quarto pamphlet. Walpole wrote the advertisement which appeared in the title page. It reads as follows: "The following poem came into my hands by accident, if the general approbation with which this little piece has been spread may be called by so slight a term as accident. 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 pleased so many readers already. I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that pleasure to many more." In spite of Gray's ruse, the poem appeared in the February number of the Magazine of Magazines, in the March number of the London Magazine, and in the April number of the Grand Magazine of Magazines. So great was the popularity of the poem that within two years twelve editions were published in English alone. Since then the editions have been too numerous to count. Pro fessor Henry Reed gives a list of translations: one in Hebrew, seven in Greek, twelve in Latin, thirteen in Italian, fifteen in French, six in German, and one in Portuguese. 1. Curfew. Cf. Longfellow's translation of Dante's "Purgatory," Canto VIII: "from far away a bell That seemeth to deplore the dying day." The custom in England of ringing a curfew dates back to the Middle Ages. Hales writes: "It is a great mistake to suppose that the ringing of the curfew was at its institution a mark of Norman oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest, it only shows that the old English police was less wellregulated than that of many parts of the Continent, and how much the superior civilization of the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse of the timber-built towns of the Middle Ages. The enforced extinction of domestic lights at an appointed signal was designed to be a safeguard against them." Parting. Departing. Cf. The Deserted Village, 11. 4 and 171. 2. Lowing. The calling sound of cattle. Wind. Late editions have winds instead of wind, but there seems to be no authority for the change. The reading wind makes a better picture, as we see the different animals in the herd, and not the herd en masse. Lea. A grassy field, or meadow. 6. Air. Object of the verb holds. 7. Save when the beetle, etc. Cf. Macbeth, III. ii. 43:— "ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne bettle, with his drowsy hum, Hath rung night's yawning peal." 8. Folds. Flocks of sheep. 13. That yew-tree's shade. "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." - BRADSHAW. 16. Rude forefathers. Rude means rustic. ... "As Gray stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. 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."-HALES. 17. Incense-breathing morn. The morning breeze laden with the fragrance of flowers. 18. Clarion. A clear, shrill note. Echoing horn. The echo of a horn blown by some early hunter. 20. Lowly bed. Not the "narrow cell," or grave, but the bed on which they sleep. 22. Ply her evening care. Ply is poetic license for apply. "To ply a care is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme share.”· - MITFORD. 23. No children, etc. Cf. Burns's "The Cotter's Saturday Night," ll. 21, 22: — "Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through 26. The stubborn glebe has broke. Glebe means ground. Broke is poetic license for broken. Consult Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, p. 343. 29-32. Let not Ambition, etc. Burns used this stanza as a motto for "The Cotter's Saturday Night." one, the rhymes are very poor. nor does toil rhyme with smile. Though the stanza is a famous Obscure does not rhyme with poor, 32. Annals of the Poor. This has been taken as the title of a book by Leigh Richmond. 33-36. The boast of heraldry, etc. Cf. Richard West's "Monody on Queen Caroline," which Mitford suggests Gray may have had in mind when he wrote the stanza: "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." |