Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes, It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through. When from the pallid sky the Sun descends, Or frequent seen to shoot athwart the gloom, Ocean, unequal press'd, with broken tide And blind commotion, heaves; while from the shore, And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice, FROM THE BARD'S SONG IN THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. 315 And in loose fragments fling them floating round. Low waves the rooted forest, vex'd, and sheds Thus struggling through the dissipated grove, Warn the devoted wretch of woe and death. Huge uproar lords it wide. The clouds, commix'd All Nature reels: till Nature's King, who oft Then strait, air, sea, and earth, are hush'd at once. FROM THE BARD'S SONG IN THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. "It was not by vile loitering in ease That Greece obtain'd the brighter palm of art, In all supreme! complete in every part ! And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart: "Had unambitious mortals minded nought, With brother-brutes the human race had graz'd; "Great Homer's song had never fir'd the breast To thirst of glory, and heroic deeds ; Sweet Maro's' Muse, sunk in inglorious rest, Our Milton's Eden had lain wrapt in weeds, Our Shakspeare stroll'd and laugh'd with Warwick swains, Ne had my master Spenser charm'd his Mulla's2 plains. "Dumb too had been the sage historic Muse, And for his country's cause been prodigal of blood? "But should your hearts to fame unfeeling be, "Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, Soon swallow'd in disease's sad abyss; While he whom toil has brac'd, or manly play, Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day. "O, who can speak the vigorous joy of health? Unclogg'd the body, unobscur'd the mind: The morning rises gay, with pleasing stealth, The temperate evening falls serene and kind. In health the wiser brutes true gladness find. See how the younglings frisk along the meads, As May comes on, and wakes the balmy wind; Rampant with life, their joy all joy exceeds: Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasaunce breeds?" 1 Virgil, born on the banks of the Mincius, in the north of Italy. See Spencer's Life, p. 54, supra. THOMAS GRAY. (1716-1771.) THOMAS GRAY was the son of a London scrivener. The brutality of his father's character caused his separation from his wife, and the poet owed his education, and perhaps his life, to the affection of his mother, who lived to witness the eminence of her son. Gray's life was spent chiefly at the University of Cambridge, amidst his favourite studies. The only breaks in his studious existence, were his continental tour with his friend Horace Walpole, the celebrated son of the great minister, and his restless journeys in search of health in Scotland and England. The error of Gray's life was a thirst for accumulation of knowledge without the activity to body it forth in living composition. Severe as a student, he was indolent as an author; with the reputation of the most learned man in Europe, and in the midst of the projection of great designs, he allowed his acquisitions to perish with himself; his charming letters, and his splendid but scanty poetry, leave the world to regret his want of egressive industry : if our virtues Do not go forth of us; 'tis all alike The rage of accumulation was also one of the banes of Coleridge. Gray's inactivity could not even rouse itself to the preparation of the lectures necessary for his Cambridge professorship of history. He was a man of ardent affections, of sincere piety, and practical benevolence; but his sequestered student life, and an affectation of the character of a gentleman who studied from choice, gave a tinge of effeminate finicalness and pedantry to his manners, that incurred the ridicule of the wilder spirits of Cambridge. He died of gout in the stomach in 1771. Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard was, and is, the most popular of his efforts. Its sentiments and scenery, however artificially wrought, will in all time come home to every bosom. His greatest Odes are "The Progress of Poesy," and "The Bard ;" and, despite the captious criticism of Johnson, posterity has shamed the injustice of Gray's contemporaries in its high estimation of these compositions. The classical grace of Gray renders him a poet peculiarly valuable to the youthful student of English. 66 THE PROGRESS OF POESY." A PINDARIC ODE. I. Awake, Æolian1 lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. A thousand rills their mazy progress take; See note 2, p. 219. Eolian is applied to his poetry by Pindar himself. 2 Aganippe and Hippocrene were springs of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses.-See note 9, p. 206. The laughing flowers that round them blow, Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign :1 The rocks, and nodding groves, rebellow to the roar. Oh! sovereign of the willing soul, And frantic passions, hear thy soft control :3 Has curb'd the fury of his car, And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command: Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king The terrour of his beak, and lightning of his eye.* Thee the voice, the dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay, O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen, On Cytherea's day," With antic Sports and blue-ey'd Pleasures, 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: 1 Periphrasis for "fields;" Ceres, the deity of agriculture. 2 Johnson harshly censures this stanza as containing an absurd mixture of metaphor. Gray's apology is found in his own note; "The subject and the simile are, as usual with Pindar, united." 3 Comp. Hor. Odes i. 32; 1. 14; iv. 3, 1. 17, &c. The name of Mars (Ares) is often connected with Thrace; see p. 8, supra; "the worship of Ares is understood to have been propagated southward from Scythia through Thrace, and most of the early myths respecting him are localized north of Hellas." See Odyss. viii. 360, &c.; Ovid, Ars Am. i 588. Feathered king, the eagle of Jove. For the images of this part of the succeeding stanza, see Pindar's First Pythian, v. 1—24. Akenside also imitates this passage in the Hymn to the Naiads;" v. 265–277. 5 Idalia or -ium, the favourite retreat of Venus (Aphrodite) in Cyprus; now Dalin. Johnson finds fault with velvet. Cytherea's day, the Aphrodisia, or festival of Venus, celebrated with great pomp and luxury in the cities of Greece and Cyprus. Cytherea, see note 2, p. 149, supra. 6 Johnson finds fault with Gray's "words arbitrarily compounded:" in particular, he censures many-twinkling," on the ground that, though we may say "many-spotted," we cannot say many-spotting." But it is plain, that "spot" is a transitive verb, and "twinkle" is intransitive, and consequently twinkling" is under the same laws of composition as the passive participle "spotted." |