I. 3.

"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,

That hush'd the stormy main:

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:

Mountains, ye mourn in vain

Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.1
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,2

Smear'd with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail;
The famish'd eagle screams, and passes by.3
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,

Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries-
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a griesly band,

I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land:

With me in dreadful harmony they join,

And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line."

II. 1.

"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, through Berkley's roof 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 Heaven! What terrors round him wait!

1 "The cloud-capt towers."-Shakspeare.

2 The shores of Caernarvonshire, opposite to the Isle of Anglesey.

3 Camden and others observe, that eagles used annually to build their aerle among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigian-eryrie, or the Crags of the Eagles. At this day the highest point of Snowdon is called the Eagle's Nest.

4 "Here," says an anonymous critic, "a vision of triumphant revenge is judiciously made to ensue, after the pathetic lamentation which precedes it. Breaks-double rhymes-an appropriated cadence --and an exalted ferocity of language, forcibly picture to us the uncontrollable tumultuous workings of the prophet's stimulated bosom."-Mason.

6 "Can there be an image more just, apposite, and nobly imagined, than this tremendous tragical winding-sheet! In the rest of this stanza the wildness of thought, expression, and cadence, are admirably adapted to the character and situation of the speaker, and of the bloody spectres, his assistants. It is not indeed peculiar to it alone, but a beauty that runs throughout the whole composition, that the historical events are briefly sketched out by a few striking circumstances, in which the Poet's office of rather exciting and directing, than satisfying the reader's imagination, is perfectly observed. Such abrupt hints, resembling the several fragments of a vast ruin, suffer not the mind to be raised to the utmost pitch by one image of horror, but that instantaneously a second and a third are pro sented to it, and the affection is still uniformly supported."—Anon. Critic.

4 Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkley Castle.

Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous Queen, whose relentless cruelty is well known. 8 Triumphs of Edward the Third in France.

Amazement in his van, with Flight coinbined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and solitude behind."

II. 2.

"Mighty victor, mighty lord,
Low on his funeral couch he lies!!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior fled ?2

Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born?8
Gone to salute the rising morn.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind's sway,

That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey."5
II. 3.

"Fill high the sparkling bowl,

The rich repast prepare,

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:

Close by the regal chair

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.7

Heard ye the din of battle bray,8

1 Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even robbed in his last moments by his cour. tiers and his mistress.

2 Edward, the Black Prince, dead some time before his father.

The summer friends, in the Hymn to Adversity. "This image is inexpressibly beautiful, but not superior to that which it so happily and unaffectedly introduces."— Wakefield.

4 Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. See Froissart, and other contemporary writers. ♪ "This representation of the whirlwind, under the image of a beast of prey lying in ambush in the daytime, expectant of the night, is not only perfectly just and natural, but incomparably sublime."- Wakefield.

• Richard the Second (as we are told by Archbishop Scroop and the confederate lords in thei manifesto, by Thomas of Walsingham, and all the older writers) was starved to death. The story of his assassination by Sir Piers of Exon is of much later date.

“This stanza (as an ingenious friend remarks) has exceeding merit. It breathes, in a lesser compass, what the ode breathes at large, the high spirit of lyric enthusiasm. The transitions are sudden and impetuous; the language full of fire and force; and the imagery carried, without impropriety, to the most daring height. The manner of Richard's death by famine exhibits such beauties of personification, as only the richest and most vivid imagination could supply. From thence we are hurried. with the wildest rapidity, into the midst of battle; and the epithet kindred, places at once before our eyes all the peculiar horrors of civil war. Immediately, by a transition most striking and unex pected, the poet falls into a tender and pathetic address; which, from the sentiments, and also from the numbers, has all the melancholy flow, and breathes all the plaintive softness, of Elegy. Again the scene changes; again the Bard rises into an allegorical description of carnage, to which the metre is admirably adapted: and the concluding sentence of personal punishment on Edward is denounced with a solemnity that chills and terrifies.”—Mason.

7 What can exceed the terrible sublimity of this picture and what is at all worthy to be par in competition with it, except that of Milton, which our author seems to have had in view?

"He ceased, for both seem'd highly pleased; and Death

Grinn'd horrible, a ghastly smile.”—Paradise Lost, ii. 845

Lance to lance, and horse to horse?

Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And through the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,'
With many a foul and midnight murder fed,
Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame,3
And spare the meek usurper's holy head.4
Above, below, the rose of snow,5

Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled Boar in infant gore

Wallows beneath the thorny shade.

Now, brothers, bending o'er th' accursed loom,
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom."

III. 1.

"Edward, lo! to sudden fate

(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.)
Half of thy heart we consecrate."

(The web is wove. The work is done.)

Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn

Leave me unbless'd, unpitied, here to mourn:

In yon bright track, that fires the western skies,
They melt, they vanish from my eyes.

But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height,
Descending slow, their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight,

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail,8

All hail, ye genuine Kings! Britannia's issue, hail!”9

III. 2.

"Girt with many a baron bold,

Sublime their starry fronts they rear;

And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old

In bearded majesty, appear.

1 Henry the Sixth, George Duke of Clarence, Edward the Fifth, Richard Duke of York, &c., be Heved to be murdered secretly in the Tower of London. The oldest part of that structure is vulgarly attributed to Julius Cæsar.

? Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who struggled hard to save her husband and her

crown.

3 Henry the Fifth.

4 Henry the Sixth, very near being canonized. The line of Lancaster had no right of inheritance

to the crown.

6 The white and red roses, devices of York and Lancaster.

• The silver boar was the badge of Richard the Third; whence he was usually known in his own time by the name of the boar.

* Eleanor of Castile died a few years after the conquest of Wales. The heroic proof she gave of her affection for her lord is well known. The monuments of his regret and sorrow for the loss of ner, are still to be seen at Northampton, Gaddington, Waltham, and other places.

8 It was the common belief of the Welsh nation, that King Arthur was still alive in Fairyland, and would return again to reign over Britain.

Both Merlin and Tallessin had prophesied, that the Welsh should regain their sovereignty over 'ussland; which seemed to be accomplished in the house of Tudor.

In the midst a form divine!

Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line;
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,1
Attemper'd sweet to virgin grace.

What strings symphonious tremble in the air!
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear! 2
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-color'd wings.

III. 3.

"The verse adorn again
Fierce war, and faithful love,
And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.

In buskin'd measures move
Pale grief, and pleasing pain,

With horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.3
A voice, as of the cherub choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;4

And distant warblings lessen on my ear,5

That lost in long futurity expire.

Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray.

Enough for me: with joy I see

The different doom our fates assign.

Be thine despair, and sceptred care;

To triumph, and to die, are mine."

He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

1 Speed, relating an audience given by Queen Elizabeth to Paul Dzialinski, ambassador of Poland, says, "And thus she, lion-like rising, daunted the malapert orator no less with her stately port and majestical deporture, that with the tartnesse of her princelle checkes."

2 Taliessin, chief of the Bards, flourished in the sixth century. His works are still preserved, and his memory is held in high veneration among his countrymen.

3 Shakspeare.

6 The succession of poets after Milton's time.

4 Milton.

6 The original argument of this capital Ode, as its author had set it down in one of the pages of his common-place book, is as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they march through a deep valley, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with prophetic spirit declares, that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble ardor of poetic genius in this island; and that men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valor in immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that ro'ls at its foot"

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD.1

The Curfew tolls 2 the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd 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 for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.3

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 afield!

How bow'd 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.

1 The reasons of that universal approbation with which this Elegy has been received, may be learned from the comprehensive encomium of Dr. Johnson: "It abounds with images which find a mirror in every soul; and with sentiments, to which every bosom returns an echo."

"Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it is the corner-stone of his glory."-Lord Byron.

"Of smaller poems, the Elegy of Gray may be considered as the most exquisite and finished example in the world, of the effect resulting from the intermixture of evening scenery and pathetic reflection."-Drake's Literary Hours, il. 66.

* Dr. Warton would spoil the tranquil simplicity of this line, by introducing a pause with a note of admiration after the word "tolls." But such affectation of solemnity and suddenness in his musing is nowhere to be found in our author.

3 "I know not what there is of spell in the following simple line,

'The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,'

but no frequency of repetition can exhaust its touching charm. This fine poem overcame even the spiteful enmity of Johnson, and forced him to acknowledge its excellence."-Sir Egerton Brydges.