Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 18

" o'er " scatter'd " " " " shadowy " Till " " " " from far Hyperion hurls around his, etc.

The accent of _Hyperion_ is properly on the penult, which is long in quant.i.ty, but the English poets, with rare exceptions, have thrown it back upon the antepenult. It is thus in the six instances in which Shakes. uses the word: e.g. _Hamlet_, iii. 4: "Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself." The word does not occur in Milton. It is correctly accented by Drummond (of Hawthornden), _Wand. Muses_:

"That Hyperion far beyond his bed Doth see our lions ramp, our roses spread;"

by West, _Pindar's Ol._ viii. 22:

"Then Hyperion's son, pure fount of day, Did to his children the strange tale reveal;"

also by Akenside, and by the author of the old play _Fuimus Troes_ (A.D. 1633):

"Blow, gentle Africus, Play on our p.o.o.ps when Hyperion's son Shall couch in west."

Hyperion was a t.i.tan, the father of Helios (the Sun), Selene (the Moon), and Eos (the Dawn). He was represented with the attributes of beauty and splendor afterwards ascribed to Apollo. His "glittering shafts" are of course the sunbeams, the "lucida tela diei" of Lucretius. Cf. a very beautiful description of the dawn in Lowell's _Above and Below_:

"'Tis from these heights alone your eyes The advancing spears of day can see, Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise, To break your long captivity."

We may quote also his _Vision of Sir Launfal_:

"It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long," etc.

54. Gray's note here is as follows: "Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connection with liberty and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh fragments; the Lapland and American songs.]" He also quotes Virgil, _aen._ vi. 796: "Extra anni solisque vias," and Petrarch, _Canz._ 2: "Tutta lontana dal camin del sole."

Cf. also Dryden, _Thren. August._ 353: "Out of the solar walk and Heaven's highway;" _Ann. Mirab._ st. 160: "Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's highway;" _Brit. Red._: "Beyond the sunny walks and circling year;" also Pope, _Essay on Man_, i. 102: "Far as the solar walk and milky way."

56. _Twilight gloom_. Wakefield quotes Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 188: "The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

57. Wakefield says, "It almost chills one to read this verse." The MS. variations are "buried native's" and "chill abode."

60. _Repeat_ [_their chiefs_, etc.]. Sing of them again and again.

61. _In loose numbers_, etc. Cf. Milton, _L'All._ 133:

"Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild;"

and Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, 11:

"numerisque fertur Lege solutis."

62. _Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs_. Cf. _P. L._ ix. 1115:

"Such of late Columbus found the American, so girt With feather'd cincture."

64. _Glory pursue_. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton compares Homer, _Il._ v. 774:

[Greek: hechi rhoas Simoeis sumballeton ede Skamandros.]

Dugald Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) says: "I cannot help remarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this exquisite stanza, in r.e.t.a.r.ding the p.r.o.nunciation of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression."

65. _Freedom's holy flame_. Cf. Akenside, _Pleas. of Imag._ i. 468: "Love's holy flame."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VALE OF TEMPE.]

66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since" (Gray).

_Delphi's steep_. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 178: "the steep of Delphos;" _P. L._ i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. and Milton prefer the mediaeval form _Delphos_ to the more usual _Delphi_.

Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parna.s.sus which end "in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak named the Phaedriades, from their glittering appearance as they faced the rays of the sun" (Smith's _Anc. Geog._).

67. _Isles_, etc. Cf. Byron:

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung," etc.

68. _Ilissus_. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus, flows through the east side of Athens.

69. _Maeander's amber waves_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ iii. 359: "Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;" _P. R._ iii. 288: "There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 520: "Purior electro campum pet.i.t amnis." Callimachus (_Cer._ 29) has [Greek: alektrinon hudor].

70. Ovid, _Met._ viii. 162, describes the Maeander thus:

"Non secus ac liquidis Phrygiis Maeandros in arvis Ludit, et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque."

Cf. also Virgil's description of the Mincius (_Geo._ iii. 15):

--"tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius."

"The first great metropolis of h.e.l.lenic intellectual life was Miletus on the Maeander. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, Cadmus, Hecataeus, etc., were all Milesians" (Hales).

71 foll. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 181:

"The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding sh.o.r.e, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent:" etc.

75. _Hallowed fountain_. Cf. Virgil, _Ecl._ i. 53: "fontes sacros."

76. The MS. has "Murmur'd a celestial sound."

80. _Vice that revels in her chains_. In his _Ode for Music_, 6, Gray has "Servitude that hugs her chain."

81. Hales quotes Collins, _Ode to Simplicity_:

"While Rome could none esteem But Virtue's patriot theme, You lov'd her hills, and led her laureate band; But staid to sing alone To one distinguish'd throne, And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land."

84. _Nature's darling_. "Shakespeare" (Gray). Cf. Cleveland, _Poems_:

"Here lies within this stony shade Nature's darling; whom she made Her fairest model, her brief story, In him heaping all her glory."

On _green lap_, cf. Milton, _Song on May Morning_:

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."

85. _Lucid Avon_. Cf. Seneca, _Thyest._ 129: "gelido flumine lucidus Alpheos."