Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed,
The modest matron, and the blushing maid,
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,
To traverse climes beyond the western main;
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound?

410

Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays
Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways,
Where beasts with man divided empire claim,
And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim;
There, while above the giddy tempest flies,

415

And all around distressful yells arise,

The pensive exile, bending with his woe,

To stop too fearful, and too faint to go,

420

Casts a long look where England's glories shine,

And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.

Vain, very vain, my 'weary search to find.
That bliss which only centres in the mind.
Why have I strayed from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,

425

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,

430

Our own felicity we make or find:

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

435

Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel,
To men remote from power but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own.

ELEGY

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

INTRODUCTION TO GRAY'S ELEGY

IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

Birth and Early Education. Thomas Gray, the son of Philip Gray, an exchange broker and scrivener, was born in London, December 26, 1716. His father, a man of some wealth, was brutal and extravagant in temperament, and neglected and ill used his family. Gray owed him little, unless the musical element in his poetry; for Philip Gray, like the father of Milton, was a skilled musician. The young Gray was indebted for the care of his bringing up and for his support at school almost wholly to his mother, to whom he remained tenderly attached all his life. His mother's brother, Robert Antrobus, taught at Eton, and here the poet had his preparatory education, afterwards attending Cambridge. When his father refused to educate him, Gray's mother maintained him at school and in the university, supporting herself and her children there were twelve in all, but none but Gray reached maturity by engaging for many years in the millinery business with a sister. This was despite her husband's attempts to secure her earnings for his own purposes. Gray · studied classical literature, history, and language, at Cambridge, but shunned the study of mathematics. Intending later to read law, he left the university in 1738, not yet having his degree, and the next year set out to tour France and Italy with his school friend, Horace Walpole, son of the prime minister and later a prominent if somewhat dilettante man of letters of the day. Gray remained abroad about two years, although not all of the time was passed with Walpole.

Life at Cambridge. Gray's father died in 1741, having wasted a large part of his fortune, and Gray returned in 1742, with but a small income of his own, to Cambridge, where he went into residence, giving up his earlier intention to read law. Here he was to spend in relative quiet and seclusion over thirty years of his life. After the death of his father, his mother and aunt disposed of their shop and went to live with a widowed sister, Mrs. Rogers, at the little village of Stoke Pogis, or Poges, in Buckinghamshire, about four miles north of the Thames, near Eton. The most picturesque feature of this village is the small church, built as early as the fourteenth century, which stands in a level, thickly-shaded churchyard dotted with graves. Gray passed most of his vacations at this village with his mother. At Cambridge he settled down to a life of reading and study, too weighed down by the menace of ill health to be very ambitious. He came, nevertheless, to be recognized as one of the most learned men of his time, and is still ranked among the most scholarly of our poets. The influence of his academic life is distinguishable in his verse. The subjects in which he was interested included history, classical literature, older English literature, modern literature, music, painting, architecture, philosophy, geography, zoölogy, botany, antiquities, heraldry, gardening. His chief recreation was travel. He visited the Scotch Highlands in 1765, and made a tour of the Lake country in 1769, anticipating Wordsworth in his enthusiasm for the region which the latter poet was to make classic.

There are but few external happenings to record of Gray's later life. His mother died in 1755 and was buried at Stoke Poges. In 1757 he was offered the poet-laureateship, but refused to accept the honor. In 1768 he was appointed professor of modern history at Cambridge, a position which he retained till his death, although he delivered no lectures, the latter being not always demanded of professors then. On July 24, 1771, while