Collected English Verse — Thomas Gray. b. 1716, d. 1771 (Part 2 of 4)

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
   To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
   With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
   Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
   They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect
   Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
   Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d muse,
   The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
   That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
   This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
   Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
   Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
   E’en in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,
   Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
   Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
   ‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
   To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
   That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
   And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
   Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
   Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,
   Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree;
Another came, nor yet beside the rill,
   Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array
   Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
   Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
   A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
   And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
   Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,
   He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

466   The Curse upon Edward

   WEAVE the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward’s race.
   Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro’ Berkley’s roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing King!
   She- wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
   From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heav’n. What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.