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O bid our vain endeavors cease, Revive the just designs of Greece, Return in all thy simple state, Confirm the tales her sons relate!

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)

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Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed, Less pleasing when possessed; The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast: Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,

ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF Wild wit, invention ever-new,

ETON COLLEGE

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And lively cheer of vigor born; The thoughtless day, the easy night, The spirits pure, the slumbers light, That fly the approach of morn.

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
The Ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train! Ah, show them where in ambush stand To seize their prey the murth'rous band! Ah, tell them, they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,

The vultures of the mind,

Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

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And Shame that skulks 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.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise, Then whirl the wretch from high, To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy.

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The stings of Falsehood those shall try, 75 And hard Unkindness' altered eye,

That mocks the tear it forced to flow; And keen Remorse with blood defiled, And moody Madness laughing wild Amid severest woe.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath A griesly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death,

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More hideous than their Queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, 85

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Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour The bloom of young desire, and purple Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. light of love. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant

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Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?

Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,
He gives to range the dreary sky:
Till down the eastern cliffs afar

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Power,

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Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,

What time, where lucid Avon strayed, 85 To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering This pencil take (she said) whose colors

shafts of war.

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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

In loose numbers wildly sweet

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Nor second he, that rode sublime 95 Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky The secrets of the Abyss to spy.

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