Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.

Nor second he, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstacy
The secrets of the abyss to spy.

He passed the flaming bounds of space and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,

Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw; but blasted with exccess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car

Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.

The Ode to Eton College,' the 'Ode to Adversity,' and the far-famed 'Elegy,' present the same careful and elaborate finish which characterize his more elevated strains; but the thoughts and imagery are far more simple, natural, and touching. A train of moral feelings, and solemn and affecting associations, is presented to the mind, in connection with beautiful natural scenery, and objects of real life. The 'Ode to Adversity,' and the 'Elegy' follow:

VOL. II.-Y

ODE TO ADVERSITY.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!

Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse, thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:

What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.

Light they disperse, and with them go

The summer friend, the flattering foe;

By vain Prosperity received;

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom, in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

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And melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,

Still on thy solemn steps attend :

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
Not in thy gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band

(As by the impious thou art seen),

With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,

Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh goddess! wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound, my heart.
The generous spark extinct revive;
Teach me to love and to forgive;
Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,

The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

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 busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow 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,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial 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
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,

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
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind:

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 learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They keep the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered 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 resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured 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 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 smilling 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 missed him on the 'customed hill,
Along the heath and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

1

Nor up the lawn, not at the wood was he.

The next, with dirges due in sad array,

Slow through the churchway 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 frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) 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.

Gray's letters are easy, flowing, and beautiful; and his descriptions of the lake scenery of Cumberland, and of the mountain scenery of Scotland and Wales, are highly graphic: they do not, however, call for farther notice.

WILLIAM COLLINS, whose history is brief but painful, and whose poems are as limited in number, and finished in execution, as those of Gray, was the son of a respectable hatter, in Chichester, and was born on Christmas day, 1720. When in the thirteenth year of his age he entered Winchester school, and thence passed to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he greatly distinguished himself for his scholarship, and took his bachelor's degree. While at college he published his Oriental Eclogues, which, to the disgrace of the university, and the literary public, were entirely neglected. He soon after quitted Oxford, and repaired to London, as a literary adventurer. He arrived in London, in 1744, and two years afterwards published his Odes, which, for some unaccountable reason, failed to attract public attention. Though Collins's learning was extensive, yet he wanted steadiness of purpose and business application; and he therefore allowed himself to sink under this disappointment, and to become more indolent and dissipated than ever. The fine promise of his youth, his mental ardor and his ambition, all melted away under this baneful and depressing influence. The death of Thomson, whom he seems to have known and loved, occurred just at this critical period in Collins's life, and once again he strung his lyre with poetical enthusiasm. The following Ode, which the occasion elicited, is unquestionably one of the finest elegiac poems in the language. The scene is supposed to lie on the Thames, near Richmond :

:

In yonder grave a Druid lies,

Where slowly winds the stealing wave!
The year's best sweets shall duteous rise,
To deck its poet's sylvan grave!

In yon deep bed of whispering reeds
His airy harp shall now be laid,
That he, whose heart in sorrow bleeds,
May love through life the soothing shade.

The maids and youths shall linger here,
And, while its sounds at distance swell,
Shall sadly seem in pity's ear

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell.