66 Pindaric, ," because they were constructed, like Greek Odes, not in uniform stanzas, but in uniform groups of stanzas. Each Ode contains three groups of three stanzas; the first two stanzas of all the groups are on the same plan; the third stanzas of the three groups correspond to each other, but differ from the first and second. "The technical Greek names for the three parts [of each group of stanzas] were στροφή, ἀντιστροφή, and ἐπῳδός— the Turn, the Counter-turn, and the After-song-names derived from the theatre, the Turn denoting the movement of the chorus from the one side of the opxnoтpá or Dance-stage to the other, the Counter-turn the reverse movement, the After-song something sung after two such movements. Odes thus constructed were called by the Greeks Epodic. Congreve is said to have been the first who so constructed English Odes. This system cannot be said to have prospered with us. Perhaps no English ear would instinctively recognise that correspondence between distant parts which is the secret of it. Certainly very many readers of the Progress of Poesy are wholly unconscious of any such harmony. Does anyone really enjoy it in itself, apart from the pleasure he may receive from his admiration of Gray's skill in construction and imitation? Does his ear hear it, or only his eye perceive it? In other words, was not Gray's labour, as far as pure metrical pleasure is concerned, wasted?" (Prof. Hales). It is probable that a larger number of readers derive pleasure from irregularly constructed English Odes, such as Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality (G. T., CCCXXXVIII.), or Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, in which the metre varies with the thought, now slow and solemn, now light and happy. Of such irregular Odes the most successful is a fragment-Coleridge's Kubla Khan (G.T., CCCXVI.). In a third class of English Odes-Spenser's Prothalamion (G. T., LXXIV.), Milton's Nativity Hymn (G. T., LXXXV.)—the stanzas all correspond with each other. 1. "The following Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death" (G.). The number of Welsh bards living at the beginning of the fourteenth century disproves the tradition. 3. Conquest's crimson wing. Victory is here personified, as often by the ancients, and represented as fanning the royal banners with her wings, which are crimson with blood. 66 4. Mocking the air with colours idly spread, Shakespeare's King John, v. 1" (G.). 5. (Neither) helm nor hauberk's.... "The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail, that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion" (G.). Properly hauberk means neck-covering armour: A.S. heals, the neck, and beorgan, to protect. Habergeon is etymologically a diminutive from hauberk. 7. secret, inmost. nightly, nocturnal, as in Milton, Nativity Ode (G. T., LXXxv. 179), "No nightly trance, or breathed spell." 8. Cambria, Wales, the land of the Cimbri or Kymry. 9. crested pride. "The crested adder's pride, Dryden's Indian Queen [III. 1]" (G.). Gray transfers the expression from the crest of a snake, the swollen part of its head, to the crest or plume of a warrior's helmet. ووو 11. Snowdon "was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian-eryri; it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the Castle of Conway, built by King Edward the First, says, 'Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis Erery'; and Matthew of Westminster (ad ann. 1283), Apud Aberconway ad pedes montis Snowdoniae fecit erigi castrum forte (G.). 'It was in the spring of 1283 that English troops at last forced their way among the defiles of Snowdon. Llewellyn had preserved those passes and heights intact till his death in the preceding December. The surrender of Dolbadern in the April following that dispiriting event opened a way for the invader, and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at once advanced by it" (Hales). 13, 14. Gloster, "Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law of King Edward. Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. They both were LordsMarchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the King in this expedition " (G.). 14. couch'd. "To fix the spear in the rest, in the posture of attack" (Johnson). 15. a rock. Probably Gray meant Pen-maen-mawr, the height referred to in Milton's Lycidas (G. T., LXXXIX. 52): "For neither were ye playing on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie." The epithet shaggy in 1. 11 may have been a reminiscence of Milton's next line-"Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high." 16. old, a favourite epithet of rivers. Cp. Paradise Lost, 1. 420, "From the bordering flood of old Euphrates." Cp. also No. 48. 9, “the hoary Thames,” and Judges v. 21, “that ancient river, the river Kishon." 19. "The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel. There are two of these paintings (both believed original), one at Florence, the other at Paris." (G.). "Moses breaking the tables of the law, by Parmegiano, was a figure which Mr. Gray used to say came still nearer to his meaning than the picture of Raphael" (Mason). Mr. Tovey aptly compares Keble's lines on Balaam, Christian Year, 2nd Sunday after Easter: "O for a sculptor's hand That thou might'st take thy stand, Thy wild hair floating in the eastern breeze, Fixed on the desert haze, As one who deep in heaven some airy pageant sees." 20. "Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind-Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 537" (G.). 23. Struck from his lyre notes express e of deep sorrows. 23. desert-cave. Another echo of Lycidas (G. T., LXXXIX. 39). 26. hoarser, either (1) than their wont or (2) growing continually hoarser. 28. high-born Hoel, soft Llewellyn. "The Dissertatio de Bardis of Evans names the first as son to the king Owain Gwynedd ; Llewellyn, last king of North Wales, was murdered 1282. Cadwallo: Cadwallon (died 631) and Urien Rheged (early kings of Gwynedd and Cumbria respectively) are mentioned by Evans (p. 78) as bards none of whose poetry is extant. Modred: Evans supplies no data for this name, which Gray (it has been supposed) uses for Merlin (Myrddin Wyllt), held prophet as well as poet. Whether intentionally or through ignorance of the real dates, Gray here seems to represent the Bard as speaking of these poets, all of earlier days, Llewellyn excepted, as his own contemporaries at the close of the thirteenth century. "Gray, whose penetrating and powerful genius rendered him in many ways an initiator in advance of his age, is probably the first of our poets who made some acquaintance with the rich and admirable poetry in which Wales from the sixth century has been fertile,—before and since his time so barbarously neglected, not in England only. Hence it has been thought worth while here to enter into a little detail upon his Cymric allusions " (F. T. P.). Prof. Hales is probably right in saying that Gray does not mean to refer to the old bards but merely appropriates their names for the companions of his own bard. 34. Plinlimmon, a mountain on the borders of Cardigan and Glamorgan, cloud-topt: cp. ‘cloud-capt towers,' Tempest, IV. i. 172. 35. Arvon. "The shores of Caernarvonshire opposite to the isle of Anglesey" (G.). Caernarvon = Caer in Arvon, the camp in Arvon, 38. "Camden and others observe, that eagles used annually to build their eyrie among the rocks of Snowden, which from thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigian-eryri, or the crags of the eagles. At this day (I am told) the highest point of Snowden is called the eagle's nest. That bird is certainly no stranger to this island, as the Scots, and the people of Cumberland, Westmoreland, etc., can testify; it even has built its nest in the Peak of Derbyshire. (See Willoughby's Ornithol., published by Ray)" (G.). 40. Cp. Virgil, Aeneid, Iv. 31, Anna refert: O luce magis dilecta sorori (Anna answers, 'Ó dearer than the light to thy sister'). 41. "As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart, Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II. i. 289-290” (G.). 44. griesly, grisly, hideous, terrible. Spenser and Milton. A favourite word with 48. "See the Norwegian Ode that follows" (G.). Gray refers to his poem of 'The Fatal Sisters' which was a translation of a Norse Ode, but made from a Latin version by Bartholin. It begins thus: "Now the storm begins to lower (Haste, the loom of Hell prepare,) Iron-sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darkened air. Glitt'ring lances are the loom, Where the dusky warp we strain, Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's woe and Randver's bane." The notion of a web of destiny was a favourite one with the Greeks and Romans. 49-100. In the italicized lines the 'lost companions' of the bard. 'join in harmony' with him. 49. Weave the warp. "They are called upon 'to weave the warp, and weave the woof,' perhaps with no great propriety: for it is by crossing the woof with the warp that men weave the web or piece" (Dr. Johnson). The great critic's own expression is not very clear; we should rather speak of crossing the warp with the woof,' for the warp is the fixed part of the fabric, the threads stretched out parallel in the loom, ready to be crossed by the woof, the interwoven or inserted thread. But Gray's instinct was right. Not merely is "weave the warp, and weave the woof" a legitimate poetical expression for "weave them together, interweave them": the repetition adds greatly to the solemnity of the phrase. Compare the repeated sound in such incantations as "Double, double, toil and trouble," and Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim. The effect of the alliteration is also to be observed: it is not confined to the initial letter 'w,' but is equally felt in the 'r' of 'warp,' 'Edward,' 'race,' 'room,' 'verge,' 'characters,' 'trace.' The 'r' sound becomes still more prominent in the lines that follow. 50. winding sheet. For a very striking use of this image in a prophecy of doom, see Rossetti's King's Tragedy. 51. Cp. "I have a soul that like an ample shield Can take in all, and verge enough for more." Dryden, Don Sebastian, I. i. 52. characters, 'figures,' 'impressions,' the literal sense of the Gr. Xapakтýp. of hell, i.e. of 'death,' 'doom,' 'destruction.' 54. "Edward the Second, cruelly butchered (A.D. 1327) in Berkley Castle" (G.). Berkley Castle, Gloucestershire. roof, Mr. F. T. Palgrave's reading, taken apparently from Mitford roofs has better authority. Cp. with this line Drayton, Barons' Wars, v. lxvii. : 66 Berkley, whose fair seat hath been famous long, 56. agonizing, intransitive, ‘suffering agony.' Hume probably had Gray's lines in his mind when he wrote in his History (vol. II., p. 359): 'The screams with which the agonizing king filled the castle.' This volume was published, as Mr. Tovey points out, after the completion of the Bard. 57. "Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous Queen" (G.). Cp. Henry VI., Pt. III. 1. iv. 111: "She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth." the bowels. In allusion to the manner of the king's death. 59. " Triumphs of Edward the Third in France" (G.). It is a question whether hangs is transitive or intransitive. If it is the latter, we might have expected a comma after 'hangs,' but there is none in the edition of 1757. Cp. Attila's title, 'the Scourge of God.' 61. "Amazement and Flight are the Aeîuos ndè Þóßos of Homer Iliad, Iv. 440, present at the clash of the Greek and Trojan hosts; Homer puts them, as does Gray, in sequence, for Aeîuos is Panic, and 6ẞos the ensuing rout" (Tovey). 66 For amazement in the sense of 'extreme fear,' 'horror,' cp. Shakespeare, Hamlet, III. iv. 112, But look! amazement on thy mother sits." |