New-born flocks, in rustic dance,
Frisking ply their feeble feet;
Forgetful of their wintry trance
The birds his presence greet:
But chief, the skylark warbles high
His trembling, thrilling, ecstasy;
And, lessening from the dazzled sight,
Melts into air and liquid light.
Yesterday the sullen year1
Saw the snowy whirlwind fly;
Mute was the music of the air,
The herd stood drooping by :
Their raptures now that wildly flow,
No yesterday nor morrow know;
'Tis man alone that joy descries
With forward and reverted eyes.
Smiles on past misfortune's brow
Soft reflection's hand can trace,
And o'er the cheek of sorrow throw
A melancholy grace;
While hope prolongs our happier hour,
Or deepest shades, that dimly lower
And blacken round our weary way,
Gilds with a gleam of distant day.
Still where rosy pleasure leads,
See a kindred grief pursue;
Behind the steps that misery treads,
Approaching comfort view;
The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
Chastised by sabler tints of woe;
And blended form, with artful strife,
The strength and harmony of life.
(1) The sullen year-i. e. the sullen season-the gloomy weather.
(2) Smiles on, &c.-This stanza is intended to illustrate the last. Reflection enables man to "descry" with "reverted," and hope with "forward" eyes.
(3) Deepest shades-governed, in construction, by "gilds."
(4) Still where, &c.--This stanza, in which the general principle is laid down, that our joys are enhanced by contrast with our sorrows, is scarcely inferior to the well-known lines, forming the illustration, which follow.
See the wretch that long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost
And breathe and walk again:
The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening paradise.
Humble Quiet builds her cell
Near the source whence pleasure flows;
She eyes the clear crystalline well,
And tastes it as it goes.
While far below the madding crowd
Rush headlong to the dangerous flood,
Where broad and turbulent it sweeps,
And perish in the boundless deeps.
THE DYING GLADIATOR.2
I SEE before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low;
And through his side, the last drops ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder shower;
The arena swims around him-he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay—
(1) The last four lines were added by Mason, Gray's most intimate friend. (2) These beautiful lines have often been quoted as an instance of the superior range of poetry as compared with sculpture. The sculptor or the painter might embody all that is suggested by the first stanza, but here, as Mr. Montgomery remarks, "they have reached their climax;" but "poetry goes further than both," and " reveals that secret of the sufferer's breaking heart, which neither of them could intimate by any visible sign." "The poet has turned the marble into man, and endowed it with human affections."
young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian' mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!-
All this rushed with his blood.
O'ER the level plain, where mountains greet me as I go;
O'er the desert waste, where fountains at my bidding flow;
On the boundless beam by day, and on the cloud by night,
I am rushing hence away;-who will chain my flight?
War his weary watch was keeping;-I have crushed his spear:
Grief within her bower was weeping;-I have dried her tear.
Pleasure caught a minute's hold;-then I hurried by,
Leaving all her banquet cold and her goblet dry.
Power had won a throne of glory;—where is now her fame?
Genius said "I live in story; "who hath heard his name?
Love beneath a myrtle bough whispered-" Why so fast ?"
And the roses on his brow withered as I past.
I have heard the heifer lowing o'er the wild waves' bed,
I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed ;—
Where began my wanderings ?-Memory will not say!
Where will rest my weary wings?-Science turns away!
Anonymous.
THE POWER OF STEAM.3
THE giant-power, from earth's remotest caves,
Lifts with strong arm her dark reluctant waves;
Each caverned rock, and hidden den explores,
Drags her dark coals, and digs her shining ores.
Next, in close cells of ribbed oak confined,
Gale after gale, he crowds the struggling wind;
The imprisoned storms through brazen nostrils roar,
Fan the white flame, and fuse the sparkling ore.
(1) Dacian-The ancient Dacia included the modern Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and part of Hungary.
(2) I have heard, &c.—In allusion to the geological changes in the earth's surface.
(3) These lines very ingeniously master the difficulty of subjecting scientific details to poetic numbers.
(4) Storms-a strong hyperbole for the blasts of the forge-bellows.
Here high in air the rising stream he pours
To clay-built cisterns, or to lead-lined towers:
Fresh through a thousand pipes the wave distils,
And thirsty cities drink the exuberant rills.
There the vast mill-stone, with inebriate whirl,
On trembling floors his forceful fingers twirl,
Whose flinty teeth the golden harvests grind,
Feast without blood, and nourish human kind.
Now his hard hands on Mona's1 rifted crest,
Bosomed in rock, her azure ores2 arrest;
With iron lips his rapid rollers seize
The lengthening bars, in thin expansion squeeze;
Descending screws, with ponderous fly-wheels wound
The tawny plates, the new medallions round;
Hard dies of steel the cupreous circles cramp,
And with quick fall his massy hammers stamp.
The Harp, the Lily, and the Lion join,
And George and Britain guard the sterling coin.
Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the fields of air.
ANCIENT BRITAIN.
Now borne upon the wings of truth sublime,
Review thy dim original and prime.
This island, spot of unreclaimed rude earth,
The cradle that received thee at thy birth,
Was rocked by many a rough Norwegian blast,
And Danish howlings scared thee as they passed;
For thou wast born amid the din of arms,
And sucked a breast that panted with alarms.
(1) Mona-the Isle of Anglesea. It is noted for its mineral riches, both in copper and lead.
(2) Azure ores-the ores of copper are of a blueish tint.
(3) The harp, &c.-The characteristic emblems of Ireland, France, and England. The fleur-de-lis was erased from the standard of England in 1802.
(4) Soon shall thy arm, &c.-These lines are curious and interesting, viewed as a kind of prophecy, for they were written several years before steam-boats and steam-carriages had come into use.
While yet thou wast a grovelling puling chit,
Thy bones not fashioned, and thy joints not knit,
The Roman taught thy stubborn knee to bow,
Though twice a Cæsar could not bend thee now.
His victory was that of orient light,
When the sun's shafts disperse the gloom of night.
Thy language at this distant moment shows
How much the country to the conqueror owes ;
Expressive, energetic, and refined,
It sparkles with the gems he left behind:
He brought thy land a blessing when he came,
He found thee savage, and he left thee tame;
Taught thee to clothe thy pinked' and painted hide,
And grace thy figure with a soldier's pride:
He sowed the seeds of order where he went,
Improved thee far beyond his own intent,
And, while he ruled thee by the sword alone,
Made thee at last a warrior like his own.
Religion, if in heavenly truths attired,
Needs only to be seen to be admired;
But thine, as dark as witcheries of the night,
Was formed to harden hearts and shock the sight;
Thy Druids struck the well-hung harps they bore
With fingers deeply dyed in human gore;
And while the victim slowly bled to death,
Upon the rolling chords rang out his dying breath.
THE PROCESSION OF RIVERS.2
AND afterwards the famous rivers came,
Which do the earth enrich and beautify;
The fertile Nile, which creatures new3 doth frame;
Long Rhodanus, whose source springs from the sky;
Fair Ister, flowing from the mountains high;
Divine Scamander, purpled yet with blood
(1) Pinked-pierced with small holes-punctured; in allusion to the custom of tattooing, practised by our British ancestors. See "Pictorial History of England," vol. i. p. 129.
(2) An extract from "The Faerie Queene," book iv., canto xi.
(3) Creatures new, &c.-The mud of the Nile used to have a fabulous reputation for producing, in consequence of its singular richness, new and monstrous animals.
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