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If ought of oaten stop,2 or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,
2

1 rustics, peasants *This song, which flows almost like an improvisation, Collins constructed from the scene in Cymbeline IV. ii, 215-229, in which Guiderius and Arviragus speak over the body of their sister Imogen, who is disguised as Fidele and O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired whom they suppose to be dead:

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sun

Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With bredes ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed:

2 musical pipe
3 embroidery
"Written," says Collins. "in the beginning of the
year 1746." The British troops had lately

suffered losses in the War of the Austrian
Succession, e. g., at Fontenoy in 1745, and
Falkirk, January, 1746.

"Although less popular than The Deserted Village and Gray's Elegy, the Ode to Evening is yet like them in embodying in exquisite form sights, sounds, and feelings of such permanent beauty that age cannot wither them nor cus tom stale."-W. C. Bronson. See also Eng. Lit., 219-220.

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No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
7

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!

8

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Ner grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

9

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.1

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

10

The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.*

16

Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes.

17

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes con-
fined;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

18

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

19

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, Fart from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted
vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 11

Can storied urn2 or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honour's voice provokes the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?

12

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.

13

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial4 current of the soul.

14

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.

15

Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

20

Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture
decked,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

21

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered
Muse,8

The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

22

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?

23

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless 6 i. e., write flattering

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THE PROGRESS OF POESY

A PINDARIC ODE*

I. 1

Awake, Æolian lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs

A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of music winds along
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:
The rocks, and nodding groves rebellow to the

roar.

I. 2

Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Oh! sovereign of the willing soul,
And frantic passions hear thy soft control.
Enchanting shell!1 the sullen cares,

On Thracia's hills the Lord of War2
And dropped his thirsty lance at thy command.
Has curbed the fury of his car,
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king3
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:
Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his

eye.

I. 3

Thee the voice, the dance, obey, Tempered to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green4

2 Mars

3 Jove's eagle

1 The lyre, said to have been made by Hermes from a tor- 4 In Cyprus, sacred to toise shell. Venus (Cytherea). The odes of Pindar, the most renowned lyric poet of ancient Greece, were mostly constructed in symmetrical triads, each triad containing a strophe, antistrophe, and epode, or turn, counter-turn, and after-song. Metrically the strophes and antistrophes all corresponded exactly throughout, and likewise the epodes. The livelier odes were written in what was known as the Eolian mood, in contrast to the graver Dorian mood and the more tender Lydian measures. Gray has borrowed freely from Pindar, even translating a portion of the first Pythian Ode. The following is a condensation of Gray's notes to his own poem: I. 1. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches.-I. 2. Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul.-I. 3. Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body. II. 1. Poetry given to mankind to compensate the real and imaginary ills of life.-II. 2. Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations.II. 3. Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England.-III. 1. 2. 3. Shakespeare. Milton, Dryden.

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen

On Cytherea's day

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
Glance their many-twinkling feet.
Slow-melting strains their queen's approach
declare:

Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime,5 that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
The bloom of young desire, and purple light of
love.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race what ills await,
Labour, and penury, the racks of pain,
Disease, and sorrow's weeping train,

And death, sad refuge from the storms of fate!
The fonde complaint, my song, disprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,
He gives to range the dreary sky:
Till down the eastern cliffs afar
Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering
shafts of war.

II. 2

In climes beyond the solar road, Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,

The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.
And oft, beneath the odorous shade
Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat
In loose numbers wildly sweet

Every shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured deep a solemn sound:

Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant-power,
And coward vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled
coast.

III. 1

Far from the sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.
This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;

Of horror that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.
III. 2.

Nor second he, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of ecstacy,
The secrets of th' abyss to spy.

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:

The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,7
Where angels tremble, while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereal race,8
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-
resounding pace.

III. 3

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

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where 'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous shame,
Th' unconquerable mind, and freedom's
flame.

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O lyre divine, what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban Eagle10 bear
Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro' the azure deep of air:

Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray
With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun:

7 Ezekiel i. 26

8 "Meant to express the stately march and sound. ing energy of Dryden's rhymes." (Gray). 9 Job xxxix, 19

10 Pindar

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