ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 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 afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast Th' applause of listening senates to command, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes. Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind. The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Their names, their years, spelt by th' unlettered 'Muse, And many a holy text around she strews, For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, For thee, who mindful of th' unhonoured dead If chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate. Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech 'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 'One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he; "The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,— Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon agèd thorn.' THE EPITAPH Here rests his head upon the lap of earth Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear, He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,)— The bosom of his Father and his God. THE PROGRESS OF POESY I. 1 Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings! The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar. I. 2 Oh sovereign of the willing soul, And dropped his thirsty lance at thy command. Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king I. 3 Thee the voice, the dance, obey, The rosy-crownèd Loves are seen, On Cytherea's day, With antic Sports and blue-eyed Pleasures Now in circling troops they meet; To brisk notes in cadence beating |