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his Italy, written 1819-1834, the merits of Rogers' best work are rather those of the eighteenth century than those of the newer verse. In this poem and in No. 34 we have-as in so much of Cowper-the tenderness, thoughtfulness and grace" that were destined, as Sir Henry Taylor said, to be "trampled in the dust" along with the "didactic dulness" of which the nineteenth century accused the eighteenth.

Some of the differences between the poetry of the two centuries will be suggested by a comparison of this poem with Tennyson's Sleeping Beauty, one of the sections of The DayDream. Much nearer to the tone of Rogers is Hood's poem, The Death Bed (G. T., CCLXXIX.).

21. For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove

“PERHAPS no writer who has given such strong proofs of the poetic nature has left less satisfactory poetry than Thomson. Yet this song, with Rule Britannia and a few others, must make us regret that he did not more seriously apply himself to lyrical writing" (F. T. P.).

3. mutual, reciprocating our feeling, loving us as we love it.

7. genial, full of cheerfulness and vitality. In the old Roman religion the Genius was the tutelary spirit that watched over each individual life: this Genius was "the source of the good gifts and hours which brighten the life of the individual man, and also the source of his physical and mental health-in a word, his good spirit" (Preller). See note on No. 5. 15, "Genii."

With this substi

10. loveless, joyless vow, the French mariage de convenance. 14. absolve thee from caring for me in the future. 16. Make but, i.e. If only thou wilt make. tution of an imperative for a conditional clause, compare the similar construction in Virgil, Eclogue x. 4-6, Sic tibi. Doris amara suam non intermisceat undam: Incipe.

22. The merchant, to secure his treasure

...

MATTHEW PRIOR, poet and diplomatist, was born in Dorsetshire in 1664. He was educated at Westminster under Dr. Busby, and at St. John's College, Cambridge. His City Mouse and Country Mouse written, in conjunction with Montague, to ridicule Dryden's Hind and Panther, procured him an appointment as secretary to the embassy at the Hague. He served in other embassies, and in 1713-4 was ambassador at Paris. With the fall of the Tories in 1714 his prosperity came to an end. He died in 1721. See Johnson's Lives of the Poets and Thackeray's English Humourists. For Cowper's high opinion of Prior's verse see the quotation in the introductory note to No. 14,

"Prior's seem to me amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humourous of English lyrical poems. Horace is always in his mind; and his song, and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and his Epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master."-Thackeray, English Humourists.

"His is the 'nameless charm' of Piron's epigram,-that fugitive je ne sais quoi of gaiety, of wit, of grace, of audacity, it is impossible to say what, which eludes analysis as the principle of life escapes the anatomist. In the present case it lifts its possessor above any other writer of familiar verse; but it is something to which we cannot give a name, unless, indeed, we take refuge in paradox, and say that it is... MATTHEW PRIOR."-Austin Dobson in Ward's English Poets.

2. Conveys, etc., i.e. Professes his cargo to be something less valuable than it really is. On this passage Prof. Rowley writes to me as follows: "It is far, I imagine, from being the only passage in the poets in which the parallelism between the thing that illustrates and the thing illustrated is not consistently maintained throughout, either breaking down before it reaches the end or being intermittent only. Here the poet, making love to Euphelia while he means love to Cloe, seems to be struck by the resemblance of his conduct to that of a merchant who consigns a specially precious commodity under a lying label, thinking it will thereby be conveyed to its destination in greater safety; and so, in his good ship, 'Verse,' consigns Love to Cloe labelled Love to Euphelia, without concerning himself about the delivery of his commodity-how Cloe is to get that which is really hers. 'Conveys' doubtless stands for 'gets it conveyed.""

7. noted, made known.

23. Never seek to tell thy love

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827), poet, painter, designer and mystic, is one of the most remarkable figures in English literature and English art. He lived apart from his contemporaries, by whom he was not appreciated or understood; and drawing inspiration from the Elizabethan poets, but still more from Nature herself, he anticipated in some ways the romantic movement in English poetry which is often dated from the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Coleridge and Wordsworth in 1798.

"With what insight and tenderness, yet in how few words, has this painter-poet here himself told Love's Secret!" (F.T.P.) Metre.-Irregular. Blake did not write his verses by the book. Rules of verse are meant to help, not to trammel, the artist; and the poet must in each case decide for himself how far he will abide by them. He may make or mar his poem by a

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bold departure from rule. The effect of the irregularity in this poem, for instance, is to aid the sense of a mysterious and gentle wind blowing where it listeth, 'silently, invisibly.' There are no metrical discords; but the element of unexpectedness in the rhythm gives it a certain unpremeditated charm. "Where he is successful," Mr. Comyns Carr says of Blake, "his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower, and at all times there is the air of careless growth that belongs to the shapes of

outward nature.

10. A traveller. Blake's poetry is full of symbols, and one can hardly interpret the symbols without narrowing their meaning unduly and destroying the poetry. But it may help some readers to be told that the traveller' is the conviction that she is loved entering the heart of the beloved one.

24.

When lovely woman stoops to folly

FROM The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xxiv. These eight lines are the only verses by OLIVER GOLDSMITH in The Golden Treasury. The whole bulk of Goldsmith's poetry is not large, but his Deserted Village must find a place in every anthology of longer English poems.

25.

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon BURNS wrote three versions of this song--all of them, probably, in 1791. The first began, "Sweet are the banks, the banks o' Doon." The second, and by far the most perfect, begins, "Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon." This is the version which, except in the first line, Mr. F. T. Palgrave has adopted. The third and best known version runs as follows:

"Ye banks and braes o' bonie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary fu' o' care!

Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird,

That wantons thro' the flowering thorn!
Thou minds me o' departed joys,

Departed never to return.

Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon

To see the rose and woodbine twine,

And ilka bird sang o' its luve,
And fondly sae did I o' mine.
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree!
And my fause luver staw my rose-
But ah! he left the thorn wi' me."

A comparison of the above with the version in the text will furnish a good lesson in literary criticism. (1) The additional epithets weaken the simplicity and brevity to which the poem owes so much of its pathetic power. (2) The later version loses a repetition that is full of meaning-the passionate recurrence of "Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird"-and inserts in lines 7 and 8 a repetition of 'departed' that is only a weakness. (3) Indeed the introduction of the word 'departed,' not to be found in either of the earlier versions, in itself strikes a false note: the rest of the poem is pure Scottish: this word recalls the atmosphere of conventional English poetry. (4) In the last line "But left the thorn wi' me" is more powerful than "But ah! he left the thorn wi' me," because the first version lets us feel the pathos for ourselves, the second insists on calling our attention to it.

"Are you not forgetting," said I, "that Burns was not then singing of himself, but of some forsaken damsel, as appears by the second stanza? which few, by the way, care to remember. As unremember'd it may have been," I continued, after a pause, 'by the only living and like to live-Poet I had known, when, so many years after, he found himself beside that 'bonnie Doon,' and whether it were from recollection of poor Burns, or of 'the days that are no more' which haunt us all, I know not-but, he somehow 'broke' as he told me, 'broke into a passion of tears.' -Fitzgerald's Euphranor (Literary Remains, Vol. II., p. 53). The 'living poet' referred to was Tennyson.

26. Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake

THE writing of this Ode seems to have been spread over several years. It was completed before Dec. 26, 1754, when Gray sent it to Wharton, calling it an "Ode in the Greek manner," and adding, "If this be as tedious to you, as it is grown to me, I shall be sorry that I sent it you." It was printed in 1757 along with The Bard (No. 8) at Horace Walpole's private press, Strawberry Hill, the two Odes being entitled simply 'Ode I.' and 'Ode II.' A motto from Pindar, Olymp. II., was prefixed-pwvâvтa ovveroîσi, "vocal to (or, having meaning for) the intelligent." A friendly reviewer suggested that Gray might with propriety have completed the quotation—ἐς δὲ τὸ πᾶν ἑρμηνέων χατίζει, “ but for the generality they need interpreters.' Gray acted upon the hint in the edition of 1768, gave the quotation in full, and added notes, together with the following 'advertisement.' "When the Author first published this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his Friends, to subjoin some explanatory Notes, but had too much respect for the understanding of his Readers to take that liberty.

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Though Gray's Elegy (No. 36) is justly esteemed the most

precious part of his poetical legacy, this Ode in some respects represents the high-water mark of his achievement. Nowhere else is the flight of his imagination so lofty, or the pomp of his language so splendid, as in the stanzas to Shakespeare and Milton, whilst the lyric melody and the sympathy with Nature of his lines about Greece (66-76) are worthy of Milton's Nativity Ode (G. T., LXXXV.) or Shelley's Hellas.

For other poetic reviews of "the progress of poetry," see Collins' Ode to Simplicity (No. 2), Cowper's Table Talk, Keats' early poem Sleep and Poetry, Mr. William Watson's Wordsworth's Grave. Matthew Arnold borrowed Gray's title for his little poetical apologue, "Youth rambles on life's arid mount."

Metre. See note to The Bard (No. 8).

Analysis of the Ode (from Gray's Notes).—“1, The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various services of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irresistible course, when swoln and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous passions. 13-24, Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. 25-41, Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body. 42-53, To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the Day, by its cheerful presence, to dispel the gloom and terrors of the Night. 54-65, Extensive influence of poetic Genius over the remotest and most uncivilised nations; its connection with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it. 66-82, Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. 83-94, Shakespeare. 95-102, Milton. 105, Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhimes."

1. Awake. “Awake, my glory; awake, lute and harp.--David's Psalms [lvii. 9]" (G.).

Aeolian lyre. "Pindar styles his own poetry, with its musical accompaniments, Αἰοληὶς μολπὴ, Αἰολίδες χορδαὶ, Αἰολίδων Tvoal avλŵv, Aeolian song, Aeolian strings, the breath of the Aeolian flute" (G.). This note was added in correction of the mistake made by one of Gray's reviewers who confused the "Aeolian lyre" with the instrument known as "the Aeolian harp. Lyric poetry was called by the Greeks Aeolian because Sappho and Alcaeus, two of the greatest lyric poets, were natives of the island of Lesbos in the region known as Aeolia or Aeolis, and wrote in the Aeolic dialect.

2. rapture, inspiration. Cp. 1. 96, 'Extasy.'

3. Helicon, a mountain range in Boeotia, Northern Greece. In

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