Gray. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH YARD. THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, Beneath those rugged elms, that yew trees shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their harrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team a-field! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, Can storied urn and animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery sooth the dull cold ear of death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid, Some heart once pregnant with celestail fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre: But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. The applause of listening senates to command, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenour of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculptures deckt, Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, And many a holy text around she strews, For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, On some fond breast the parting soul relies, For thee, who mindful of th' unhonoured dead, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate: Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreaths 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, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove, Now drooping woful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, Along the heath and near his favourite tree, Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn nor at the wood was he; |