"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, "Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would ❝ rove; "Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, "Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless ❝ love. "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, "Nor up "The next with dirges due in sad array "Slow thro' the church-way path we saw "him borne. "Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the lay "Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged "thorn." THE EPITAPH [5]. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown: Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heav'n did a recompence as largely send: He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear, He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, [5] Before the Epitaph, Mr. Gray originally inserted a very beautiful stanza, which was printed in some of the first editions, but afterwards omitted, because he thought that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines however are, in themselves, exquisitely fine, and demand preservation. There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, 1 (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God [6]. [6] Of this Elegy Dr. Johnson (who has depreciated Mr. Gray as much as possible for his poetry in general) says, that it " abounds with images "which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which "every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning, 'Yet " even these bones' are to me original: I have never seen the notions "in any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades himself "that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it had "been vain to blame, and useless to praise him." |