1. 13. that yew tree. There is still in Stoke-Pogis churchyard a great yew tree under which it is said Gray often sat. 1. 17. The breezy call. The peasants might be roused from sleep by the swallows that twittered on the thatched roof, or by the crow of the cock, or by the hunter's horn: or they might be summoned forth by the mere beauty of the new day the breezy call of morning. 1. 22. ply. 1. 23. lisp. - To be busy with. Beetles drone; bells tinkle; swallows twitter; and children lisp. The poet uses onomatopoeic words; that is words that suggest the sound by imitating it. 1. 26. glebe. A poetic word for turf or soil. 1. 27. jocund. Not plodding wearily after a day of labor, but refreshed with the night's repose. 1. 28. bowed. The word presents an image of a tree as it begins to fall. 1. 36. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Parkman tells us that in 1579 while the Elegy was a comparatively new poem, it was repeated by General Wolfe on the evening before he fell in the battle of Quebec. "For two full hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The general was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense Among the rest was the verse which strain of his thoughts. his own fate was soon to illustrate, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave.' 'Gentlemen' he said, as his recital ended, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.' 1. 39. the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault. The wealthy, the noble, and the famous were not buried in the churchyard, but within the church where trophies were raised in their honor. See Westminster Abbey in Irving's SketchBook for an account of such memorials. The roof of a vault was said to be fretted when it was ornamented with a design in relief of lines crossing at right angles. 1. 41. storied urn. An urn or vase with ornamentation that suggests a story or historical account. Milton in Il Penseroso speaks of storied windows. 1. 43. Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust. Classical taste approved of the personification of abstractions such as, honor, ambition, grandeur, memory, flattery, and knowledge. This practice, however, was injurious to poetry. The ideas expressed in verse should be concrete; far from being obscure, they should be such as will make a vivid sensuous impression. The romantic poets avoided personified abstractions; they even preferred specific rather than general terms. This tendency is evident here in the poet's use of the words owl, swallow, ivy, elm, yew, beech, and thorn. 1. 46. Pregnant with celestial fire. Full of a divine enthusiasm, which might have manifested itself in statecraft by swaying the rod of empire, or in poetry by playing upon men's memories and emotions until they were aroused to ecstasy. What are these spoils? 1. 50. Spoils of Time. 1. 52. froze the genial current. Are poverty and poetry at odds with one another? Would not a true poet sing whatever his surroundings? Could there be a mute Milton? One would think that Burns would have been mute if a true poet could be. How far can a man control his environment? The view that Gray took of the destiny of the uneducated poor may have been scientific, or it may not have been; but it certainly was charitable, and it was far more democratic than that taken by previous poets. 1. 57. Some village Hampden. In 1636 John Hampden refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I. was levying without the authority of Parliament. Concerning the little tyrant, see the note on line 37 of The Deserted Village. When Gray wrote, there was still much unreasonable prejudice against Cromwell. This stanza originally appeared as follows: "Some village Cato who with dauntless Breast In the Saturday Review for June 19, 1875, a writer comments on the stanzas as follows: 66 Gray, having first of all put down the names of three Romans as illustrations of his meaning, afterwards deliberately struck them out and put the names of three Englishmen instead. This is a sign of a change in the taste of the age, a change with which Gray himself had a good deal to do. The deliberate wiping out of the names of Cato, Tully, and Cæsar, to put in the names of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, seems to us so obviously a change for the better that there seems to be no room for any doubt about it. It is by no means certain that Gray's own contemporaries would have thought the matter equally clear. We suspect that to many people in his day it must have seemed a daring novelty to draw illustrations from English history, especially from parts of English history which, it must be remembered, were then a great deal more recent than they are now. To be sure, in choosing English illustrations, a poet of Gray's time was in rather a hard strait. If he chose illustrations from the century or two before his own time, he could only choose names which had hardly got free from the strife of recent politics. If, in a poem of the nature of the Elegy, he had drawn illustrations from earlier times of English history, he would have found but few people in his day likely to understand him. "The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza is not only an improvement in a particular poem, it is a sign of a general improvement in taste. He first wrote according to the vicious taste of an earlier time, and he then changed it according to his own better taste. And of that better taste he was undoubtedly a prophet to others. Gray's poetry must have done a great deal to open men's eyes to the fact that they were Englishmen, and that on them, as Englishmen, English things had a higher claim than Roman, and that to them English examples ought to be more speaking than Roman ones. But there is another side of the case not to be forgotten. Those who would have regretted the change from Cato, Tully, and Cæsar to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, those who perhaps really did think that the bringing in of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell was a degradation of what they would have called the Muse, were certainly not those who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and Cæsar. The classic' taste from which Gray helped to deliver us was a taste which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Pardonable perhaps in the first heat of the Renaissance, when classic' studies and objects had the charm of novelty, it had become by his day a mere silly fashion." I. 71. Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride. From the time when poetry first began to be produced by individual authors until the days of the Romantic Movement poets were accustomed to write verse in praise of patrons. Oftentimes these patrons in return for flattery expressed, or for the distinction of having their names connected with famous works, rewarded the authors with money or remunerative positions. As a result many poets sought to make their poems acceptable to wealthy and influential patrons by expressing only such sentiments as would accord with the views of the powerful and the rich. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that in poetry the poor and weak had few advocates. With the changes that took place in society and public opinion in the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, poets also changed their views regarding patronage; Samuel Johnson, who was contemporaneous with Gray did his utmost to obtain intellectual independence for poetry. Gray himself never had a patron. Oliver Goldsmith dedicated his Traveller, in 1764, to his brother who was passing rich on forty pounds a year, and The Deserted Village to his friend Joshua Reynolds, from whom he could hope to receive no material advantage. Byron was so utterly opposed to the whole system of patronage that in the early part of his career he was unwilling even to receive from the publisher pay for his copyrights. Thus by the time the Romantic Movement had reached its climax the system of literary patronage had practically passed out of existence. 1. 72. At this point Gray originally inserted in the poem the four following stanzas: "The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, Exalt the brave, and idolize success; But more to innocence their safety owe, Than pow'r or genius e'er conspired to bless. |