To arm the hand of childhood, and rebrace
The slacken'd sinews of time-wearied age.

Yes, we may meet, ungrateful boy, we may !
Again the buried Genius of old Rome
Shall from the dust uprear his reverend head,
Rous'd by the shout of millions: there before
His high tribunal thou and I
appear.

Let majesty sit on thy awful brow,

And lighten from thy eye: around thee call The gilded swarm that wantons in the sunshine Of thy full favour; Seneca be there

In gorgeous phrase of labour'd eloquence

141

145

To dress thy plea, and Burrhus strengthen it 150 With his plain soldier's oath, and honest seeming. Against thee, liberty and Agrippina :

The world, the prize; and fair befall the victors.

155

But soft! why do I waste the fruitless hours In threats unexecuted? Haste thee, fly These hated walls that seem to mock my shame, And cast me forth in duty to their lord.

ACER. 'Tis time to go, the sun is high advanc'd, And, ere mid-day, Nero will come to Baix.

V. 148. "Hi rectores imperatoriæ juventæ, et pari in societate potentiæ, concordes, diversâ arte, ex æquo pollebant. Burrus militaribus curis, et severitate morum: Seneca præceptis eloquentiæ, et comitate honestâ." Taciti Annales, xiii.

c. 2.

V. 149. See Seneca Octav. v. 377.

V. 150. So in the speech of Burrhus in the Britannicus of Racine, act i. sc. 2:

"Je répondrai, madame; avec la liberté

D'un soldat, que sait mal farder la vérité."

And again, act i. sc. 2:

"Burrhus pour le mensonge, eut toujours trop d'horreur."

K

AGRIP. My thought aches at him; not the basilisk

More deadly to the sight, than is to me
The cool injurious eye of frozen kindness.
I will not meet its poison. Let him feel
Before he sees me.

ACER.

160

Why then stays my sovereign,

Where he so soon may

AGRIP.

165

Yes, I will be gone, But not to Antium all shall be confess'd, Whate'er the frivolous tongue of giddy fame Has spread among the crowd; things, that but whisper'd

Have arch'd the hearer's brow, and riveted

His eyes in fearful extasy: no matter

170

What; so't be strange and dreadful. — Sorceries,
Assassinations, poisonings - the deeper
My guilt, the blacker his ingratitude.

And you, ye manes of ambition's victims,
Enshrined Claudius, with the pitied ghosts
Of the Syllani, doom'd to early death,
(Ye unavailing horrors, fruitless crimes!)

V. 169. Whom have I hurt? has poet yet or peer
Lost the arch'd eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer?"
Pope. Prol. to the Satires, ver. 95.

"To arch the brows which on them gaz'd."

175

V. Marvell. Poems, i. 45.

V. 172. "Pour rendre sa puissance, et la vôtre odieuses, J'avourai les rumeurs les plus injurieuses,

Je confesserai tout, exils, assassinâts,

Poison même."

Britannicus, act iii. sc. 3.

See also Taciti Annales, lib. xiii. c. 15.

V. 176. "Prô facinus ingens! fœminæ est munus datus

If from the realms of night my voice ye hear,
In lieu of penitence, and vain remorse,
Accept my vengeance. Though by me ye bled,
He was the cause. My love, my fears for him,
Dried the soft springs of pity in my heart,
And froze them up with deadly cruelty.
Yet if your injur'd shades demand my fate,
If murder cries for murder, blood for blood,
Let me not fall alone; but crush his pride,
And sink the traitor in his mother's ruin.

185

[Exeunt.

Отно. Thus far we're safe. Thanks to the

rosy queen

Of amorous thefts: and had her wanton son
Lent us his wings, we could not have beguil❜d 190
With more elusive speed the dazzled sight
Of wakeful jealousy. Be gay securely;
Dispel, my fair, with smiles, the tim'rous cloud
That hangs on thy clear brow. So Helen look'd,
So her white neck reclin'd, so was she borne

195

Senecæ Octavia, ver. 148.

And see Taciti Annales, xii. c. 3, 4.

Cic. de Nat. Deor. ii. 42.

V. 195. "Obstipum caput et tereti cervice reflexum."

"Et caput inflexâ lentum cervice recumbit

Marmored."

"Niveâ cervice reclinis

Mollitur ipsa."

Virgilii Ciris. 449.

Manil. Astron. 5. v. 555.

This particular beauty is also given to Helen by Constantine

By the young Trojan to his gilded bark
With fond reluctance, yielding modesty,
And oft reverted eye, as if she knew not
Whether she fear'd, or wish'd to be pursued.

*

196

HYMN TO IGNORANCE.

A FRAGMENT.

[See Mason's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 75. Supposed to be written about the year 1742, when Gray returned to Cambridge.]

HAIL, horrors, hail! ye ever gloomy bowers,
Ye gothic fanes, and antiquated towers,
Where rushy Camus' slowly winding flood
Perpetual draws his humid train of mud:

Manasses, in his "Annales," (see Meursii Opera, vol. vii. p. 390):

Δειρὴ μακρὰ καταλευκος, ὅθεν ἐμυθουργήθη

Κυκνογενῆ τὴν εὐόπτον Ἑλένην χρημάτιζειν.

And so also in the Antehomerica of Tzetzes, ed. Jacobs. p. 115 (though the passage is corrupted).

"That soft cheek springing to the marble neck,

Which bends aside in vain."

Akenside. Pl. of Imag. b. i. p. 112. ed. Park.

V. 197. See Milton. Par. L. iv. 310:

"Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet, reluctant amorous delay."

V. 1. "Hail, horrors, hail!" Milton. Par. L. i. 205.

Luke.

V. 3. "Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum," Miltoni Eleg. i. 11. and 89. "juncosas Cami remeare paludes." Luke.

Glad I revisit thy neglected reign,

5

[high

10

Oh take me to thy peaceful shade again.
But chiefly thee, whose influence breathed from
Augments the native darkness of the sky;
Ah, ignorance! soft salutary power!
Prostrate with filial reverence I adore.
Thrice hath Hyperion roll'd his annual race,
Since weeping I forsook thy fond embrace.
Oh
say, successful dost thou still oppose
Thy leaden ægis 'gainst our ancient foes?
Still stretch, tenacious of thy right divine,
The massy sceptre o'er thy slumb'ring line?
And dews Lethean through the land dispense
To steep in slumbers each benighted sense?
If any spark of wit's delusive ray
Break out, and flash a momentary day,
With damp, cold touch forbid it to aspire,
And huddle up in fogs the dang'rous fire.

15

20

Oh say- she hears me not, but, careless grown, Lethargic nods upon her ebon throne.

V. 4.

"Where rivers now

Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train."

Milton. Par. Lost, vii. 310.

V. 14. "To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead."

Pope. Dunciad, i. 28.

And so in the speech of Ignorance in "Henry and Minerva," by I. B. 1729 (one among the poetical pieces bound up by Pope in his library, and now in my possession):

Myself behind this ample shield of lead,

Will to the field my daring squadrons head." V. 17. "Let Fancy still my sense in Lethe steep." Shakesp. T. Night. act iv. sc. 1.

Luke.

V. 22. "Here Ignorance in steel was arm'd, and there
Cloath'd in a cowl, dissembled fast and pray'r;