Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (129 page)

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

YE distant spires, ye antique towers,
 
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
 
Her Henry’s holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
  
5
Of Windsor’s heights th’ expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
 
His silver-winding way:
  
10

Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
 
Ah fields beloved in vain!
When once my careless childhood stray’d,
 
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
  
15
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing
My weary soul they seem to soothe
And, redolent of joy and youth,
 
To breathe a second spring.
  
20

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
 
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green
 
The paths of pleasure trace;
Who foremost now delight to cleave
  
25
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthral?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle’s speed
 
Or urge the flying ball?
  
30

While some on earnest business bent
 
Their murmuring labours ply
‘Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint
 
To sweeten liberty:
Some bold adventurers disdain
  
35
The limits of their little reign
And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
 
And snatch a fearful joy.
  
40

Gay Hope is theirs by fancy fed,
 
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
 
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom Health, of rosy hue,
  
45
Wild Wit, Invention ever new,
And lively Cheer, of Vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light
 
That fly th’ approach of morn.
  
50

Alas! regardless of their doom
 
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come
 
Nor care beyond to-day:
Yet see how all around ’em wait
  
55
The ministers of human fate
And black Misfortune’s baleful train!
Ah shew them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey, the murderous band!
 
Ah, tell them they are men!
  
60

These shall the fury Passions tear,
 
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
 
And shame that sculks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
  
65
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth
That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
 
And Sorrow’s piercing dart.
  
70

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
 
Then whirl the wretch from high
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice
 
And grinning Infamy.
The stings of Falsehood those shall try
  
75
And hard Unkindness’ alter’d eye,
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
 
Amid severest woe.
  
80

Lo, in the Vale of Years beneath
 
A griesly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,
 
More hideous than their Queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
  
85
That every labouring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
 
And slow-consuming Age.
  
90

To each his sufferings: all are men,
 
Condemn’d alike to groan;
The tender for another’s pain,
 
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
  
95
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise!
No more; — where ignorance is bliss,
 
’Tis folly to be wise.
  
100

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Hymn to Adversity

Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

 
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
  
5
 
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, design’d,
  
10
 
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,
  
15
And from her own she learn’d 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.
  
20
 
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 array’d
  
25
 
Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
 
And Melancholy, silent maid,
 
With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
 
Still on thy solemn steps attend:
 
Warm Charity, the general friend,
  
30
 
With Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

 
O! gently on thy suppliant’s head
 
Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
 
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
  
35
 
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; —
40

 
Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear,
 
Thy milder influence impart,
 
Thy philosophic train be there
 
To soften, not to wound my heart.
 
The generous spark extinct revive,
  
45
 
Teach me to love and to forgive
 
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Ode on the Spring

Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

LO! where the rosy-bosom’d Hours,
 
Fair Venus’ train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers
 
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat
  
5
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
The untaught harmony of Spring:
While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky
 
Their gather’d fragrance fling.
  
10

Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
 
A broader, browner shade,
Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
 
O’er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water’s rushy brink
  
15
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the Crowd,
How low, how little are the Proud,
 
How indigent the Great!
  
20

Still is the toiling hand of Care;
 
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how thro’ the peopled air
 
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
  
25
Eager to taste the honied spring
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o’er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
 
Quick-glancing to the sun.
  
30

To Contemplation’s sober eye
 
Such is the race of Man:
And they that creep, and they that fly
 
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
  
35
But flutter thro’ life’s little day,
In Fortune’s varying colours drest:
Brush’d by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill’d by Age, their airy dance
 
They leave, in dust to rest.
  
40

Methinks I hear in accents low
 
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
 
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets,
  
45
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone —
 
We frolic while ’tis May.
  
50

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

The Progress of Poesy

A Pindaric Ode

Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

 
AWAKE, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon’s harmonious springs
 
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers that round them blow.
  
5
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of Music winds along
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Through verdant vales, and Ceres’ golden reign;
Now rolling down the steep amain
  
10
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:
The rocks and nodding groves re-bellow to the roar.

 
O Sovereign of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares
  
15
 
And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia’s hills the Lord of War
Has curb’d the fury of his car
And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand
  
20
Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather’d king
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:
Quench’d in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey
  
25
Temper’d to thy warbled lay.
O’er Idalia’s velvet-green
The rosy-crownéd Loves are seen
On Cytherea’s day,
With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
  
30
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,
 
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
 
Glance their many-twinkling feet.
  
35
Slow melting strains their Queen’s approach declare:
 
Where’er she turns, the Graces homage pay:
With arms sublime that float upon the air
 
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O’er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
  
40
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

 
Man’s feeble race what ills await!
Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease, and Sorrow’s weeping train,
 
And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!
  
45
The fond complaint, my song, disprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.
Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse
Night, and all her sickly dews,
Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry
  
50
He gives to range the dreary sky:
Till down the eastern cliffs afar
Hyperion’s march they spy, and glittering shafts of war.

 
In climes beyond the solar road
Where shaggy forms o’er ice-built mountains roam,
  
55
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom
 
To cheer the shivering native’s dull abode.
And oft, beneath the odorous shade
Of Chili’s boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat
  
60
In loose numbers wildly sweet
Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where’er the Goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous Shame,
Th’ unconquerable Mind, and Freedom’s holy flame.
  
65

Woods, that wave o’er Delphi’s steep,
Isles, that crown th’ Aegean deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Maeander’s amber waves
In lingering lab’rinths creep,
  
70
How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain
 
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and hallow’d fountain
  
75
 
Murmur’d deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine, in Greece’s evil hour
 
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,
 
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains.
  
80
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
They sought, O Albion! next, thy sea-encircled coast.

 
Far from the sun and summer-gale
In thy green lap was Nature’s Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray’d,
  
85
 
To him the mighty Mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless Child
Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smiled.
This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:
  
90
Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of Joy;
Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.
 
Nor second He, that rode sublime
  
95
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy
The secrets of the Abyss to spy:
 
He pass’d the flaming bounds of Place and Time:
The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze
Where Angels tremble while they gaze,
  
100
He saw; but blasted with excess 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,
  
105
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o’er,
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
  
110
But ah! ’tis heard no more —
Oh! Lyre divine, what daring Spirit
Wakes thee now! Tho’ he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
 
That the Theban Eagle bear,
  
115
Sailing with supreme dominion
 
Thro’ the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
 
Such forms as glitter in the Muse’s ray
With orient hues, unborrow’d of the sun:
  
120
 
Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate:
Beneath the Good how far — but far above the Great.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order