Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 12

"Her goodly length stretcht on a lilly-bed."

104. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 644: "divided by a babbling brook;" and Horace, _Od._ iii. 13, 15:

"unde loquaces Lymphae desiliunt tuae."

Wakefield quotes _As You Like It_, ii. 1:

"As he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this road."

105. _Smiling as in scorn_. Cf. Shakes. _Pa.s.s. Pilgrim_, 14:

"Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile, In scorn or friends.h.i.+p, nill I construe whether."

and Skelton, _Prol. to B. of C._:

"Smylynge half in scorne At 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 antic.i.p.atory 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 a.s.sueta 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 "h.o.a.ry-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 The old preterite _grove_ is obsolete.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,

"He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear."

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 ill.u.s.tration of it:

"His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live."

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:

"With trembling tenderness of hope and fear;"

and Beaumont, _Psyche_, xv. 314:

"Divided here twixt trembling hope and fear."

Hooker (_Eccl. Pol._ i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of things far removed."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

ODE ON THE SPRING.

The original ma.n.u.script t.i.tle of this ode was "Noontide." It was first printed in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 271, under the t.i.tle 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 Spring To weeping Fancy pines."

The _Horae_, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the G.o.ddesses 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 Horae, 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 a.s.sociated with her by Homer, Hesiod, and other cla.s.sical 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, _Astraea 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):