Select Poems of Thomas Gray, Thomas Gray [reading list TXT] 📗
- Author: Thomas Gray
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93. On a MS. variation of this stanza given by Mitford, see above, footnote.
95. Chance is virtually an adverb here = perchance.
98. The peep of dawn. Mitford quotes Comus, 138:
"Ere the blabbing eastern scout,The nice morn, on the Indian steep
From her cabin'd loop-hole peep."
99. Cf. Milton, P. L. v. 428:
"though from off the boughs each mornWe brush mellifluous dews;"
and Arcades, 50:
Wakefield quotes Thomson, Spring, 103:
"Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
From the bent brush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk."
100. Upland lawn. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 25:
"Ere the high lawns appear'dUnder the opening eyelids of the morn."
In L'Allegro, 92, we have "upland hamlets," where Hales thinks "upland=country, as opposed to town." He adds, "Gray in his Elegy seems to use the word loosely for 'on the higher ground;' perhaps he took it from Milton, without quite understanding in what sense Milton uses it." We doubt whether Hales understands Milton here. It is true that upland used to mean country, as uplanders meant countrymen, and uplandish countrified (see Nares and Wb.), but the other meaning is older than Milton (see Halliwell's Dict. of Archaic Words), and Johnson, Keightley, and others are probably right in considering "upland hamlets" an instance of it. Masson, in his recent edition of Milton (1875), explains the "upland hamlets" as "little villages among the slopes, away from the river-meadows and the hay-making."
101. As Mitford remarks, beech and stretch form an imperfect rhyme.
102. Luke quotes Spenser, Ruines of Rome, st. 28:
103. His listless length. Hales compares King Lear, i. 4: "If you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry." Cf. also Brittain's Ida (formerly ascribed to Spenser, but rejected by the best editors), iii. 2:
104. Cf. Thomson, Spring, 644: "divided by a babbling brook;" and Horace, Od. iii. 13, 15:
"unde loquacesLymphae desiliunt tuae."
Wakefield quotes As You Like It, ii. 1:
"As he lay alongUnder an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this road."
105. Smiling as in scorn. Cf. Shakes. Pass. Pilgrim, 14:
"Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether."
and Skelton, Prol. to B. of C.:
"Smylynge half in scorneAt our foly."
107. Woeful-wan. Mitford says: "Woeful-wan is not a legitimate compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they are, when released from the handcuffs of the hyphen." The hyphen is not in the edition of 1768, and we should omit it if it were not found in the Pembroke MS.
Wakefield quotes Spenser, Shep. Kal. Jan.:
"For pale and wanne he was (alas the while!)May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke."
108. "Hopeless is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way" (Hales).
109. Custom'd is Gray's word, not 'custom'd, as usually printed. See either Wb. or Worc. s. v. Cf. Milton, Ep. Damonis: "Simul assueta seditque sub ulmo."
114. Churchway path. Cf. Shakes. M. N. D. v. 2:
"Now it is the time of night,That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the churchway paths to glide."
115. For thou canst read. The "hoary-headed swain" of course could not read.
116. Grav'd. The old form of the participle is graven, but graved is also in good use. The old preterite grove is obsolete.
117. The lap of earth. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 7, 9:
"For other beds the Priests there used none,But on their mother Earths deare lap did lie;"
and Milton, P. L. x. 777:
"How glad would lay me down,As in my mother's lap!"
Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the pathetic sentence of Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 63: "Nam terra novissime complexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, tum maxime, ut mater, operit."
123. He gave to misery all he had, a tear. This is the pointing of the line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of Mathias, who seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the recent editors, almost without exception) to,
This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment. If one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to try to make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not only thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as an illustration of it:
126. Mitford says that Or in this line should be Nor. Yes, if "draw" is an imperative, like "seek;" no, if it is an infinitive, in the same construction as "to disclose." That the latter was the construction the poet had in mind is evident from the form of the stanza in the Wrightson MS., where "seek" is repeated:
"No farther seek his merits to disclose,Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode."
127. In trembling hope. Gray quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 104: "paventosa speme." Cf. Lucan, Pharsalia, vii. 297: "Spe trepido;" Mallet, Funeral Hymn, 473:
and Beaumont, Psyche, xv. 314:
Hooker (Eccl. Pol. i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of things far removed."
The original manuscript title of this ode was "Noontide." It was first printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 271, under the title of "Ode."
1. The rosy-bosom'd Hours. Cf. Milton, Comus, 984: "The Graces and the rosy-bosom'd Hours;" and Thomson, Spring, 1007:
"The rosy-bosom'd SpringTo weeping Fancy pines."
The Horæ, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses of the seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented by "the dance of the Hours." They were often described, in connection with the Graces, Hebe, and Aphrodite, as accompanying with their dancing the songs of the Muses and the lyre of Apollo. Long after the time of Homer they continued to be regarded as the givers of the seasons, especially spring and autumn, or "Nature in her bloom and her maturity." At first there were only two Horæ, Thallo (or Spring) and Karpo (or Autumn); but later the number was three, like that of the Graces. In art they are represented as blooming maidens, bearing the products of the seasons.
2. Fair Venus' train. The Hours adorned Aphrodite (Venus) as she rose from the sea, and are often associated with her by Homer, Hesiod, and other classical writers. Wakefield remarks: "Venus is here employed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the source of creation and beauty."
3. Long-expecting. Waiting long for the spring. Sometimes incorrectly printed "long-expected." Cf. Dryden, Astræa Redux, 132: "To flowers that in its womb expecting lie."
4. The purple year. Cf. the Pervigilium Veneris, 13: "Ipsa gemmis purpurantem pingit annum floribus;" Pope, Pastorals, i. 28: "And lavish Nature paints the purple year;" and Mallet, Zephyr: "Gales that wake the purple year."
5. The Attic warbler. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of Attica, was changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of Athens (P. R. iv. 245):
"where the Attic birdTrills her thick-warbled notes the summer long."
Cf. Ovid, Hal. 110: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus;" and Propertius, ii. 16, 6: "Attica volucris."
Pours her throat is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?"
6, 7. Cf. Thomson, Spring, 577:
"From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,The symphony of spring."
9, 10. Cf. Milton, Comus, 989:
"And west winds with musky wingAbout the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smells."
12. Cf. Milton, P. L. iv. 245: "Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers;" Pope, Eloisa, 170: "And breathes a browner horror on the woods;" Thomson, Castle of Indolence, i. 38: "Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."
According to Ruskin (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.) there is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante "does not acknowledge the existence of the colour of brown at all," he goes on to say: "But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly and by mere accident, after we had been talking about other things, 'Do you know I have found that there is no brown in nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.' It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue," etc.
14. O'ercanopies the glade. Gray himself quotes Shakes. M. N. D. ii. 1: "A bank o'ercanopied with luscious woodbine."1 Cf. Fletcher, Purple Island, i. 5, 30: "The beech shall yield a cool, safe canopy;" and Milton, Comus, 543: "a bank, With ivy canopied."
1 The reading of the folio of 1623 is: "I know a banke where the wilde time blowes,Where Oxslips and the nodding Violet growes,
Quite ouer-cannoped with luscious woodbine." Dyce and some other modern editors read,
15. Rushy brink. Cf. Comus, 890: "By the rushy-fringed bank."
19, 20. These lines, as first printed, read:
"How low, how indigent the proud!How little are the great!"
22. The panting herds. Cf. Pope, Past. ii. 87: "To closer shades the panting flocks remove."
23. The peopled air. Cf. Walton, C. A.: "Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing;" Beaumont, Psyche: "Every tree empeopled was with birds of softest throats."
24. The busy murmur. Cf. Milton, P. R. iv. 248: "bees' industrious murmur."
25. The insect youth. Perhaps suggested by a line in Green's Hermitage, quoted in a letter of Gray to Walpole: "From maggot-youth through change of state," etc. See on 31 below.
26. The honied spring. Cf. Milton, Il Pens. 142: "the bee with honied thigh;" and Lyc. 140: "the honied showers."
"There has of late arisen," says Johnson in his Life of Gray, "a practice of giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of participles, such as the cultured plain, the daisied bank; but I am sorry to see in the lines of a scholar like Gray the honied spring." But, as we have seen, honied is found in Milton; and Shakespeare also uses it in Hen. V. i. 1: "honey'd sentences." Mellitus is used by Cicero, Horace, and Catullus. The editor of an English dictionary, as Lord Grenville has remarked, ought to know "that the ready conversion of our substances into verbs, participles, and participial
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