Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air.
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams;
Till, choked and matted with the dreary shower,
The forest-walks, at every rising gale,

Roll wide the wither'd waste, and whistle bleak.
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. Even what remain'd
Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.

The western sun withdraws the shorten'd day;
And humid Evening, gliding o'er the sky,

In her chill progress, to the ground condensed
The vapours throws. Where creeping waters ooze,
Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along
The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the Moon,
Full-orb'd, and breaking through the scatter'd clouds,
Shows her broad visage in the crimson'd east.
Turn'd to the Sun direct, her spotted disk-
Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,
And caverns deep, as optic tube descries,
A smaller earth-gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.

Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime;
Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild
O'er the sky'd mountain to the shadowy vale,

While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam,

The whole air whitens with a boundless tide

Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.

What art thou, Frost? and whence are thy keen stores Derived, thou secret, all-invading power,

Whom even th' illusive fluid cannot fly?

Is not thy potent energy, unseen,

Myriads of little salts, or hook'd, or shaped

Like double wedges, and diffused immense

Through water, earth, and ether? Hence at eve,
Steamed eager from the red horizon round,

With the fierce rage of Winter deep-suffused,
An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career
Arrests the bickering stream. The loosen'd ice,
Let down the flood and half dissolved by day,
Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank
Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone,
A crystal pavement, by the breath of heaven
Cemented firm; till, seized from shore to shore,
The whole imprison'd river growls below.
Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects
A double noise; while, at his evening watch,
The village-dog deters the nightly thief;
The heifer lows; the distant waterfall
Swells in the breeze; and with the hasty tread
Of traveller the hollow-sounding plain
Shakes from afar. The full ethereal round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen; and, all one cope
Of starry glitter, glows from pole to pole.
From pole to pole the rigid influence falls,
Through the still night, incessant, heavy, strong,
And seizes Nature fast. It freezes on,

Till Morn, late-rising o'er the drooping world,
Lifts her pale eye unjoyous. Then appears
The various labors of the silent night:

Prone from the dripping eave, and dumb cascade,
Whose idle torrents only seem to roar,

The pendant icicle; the frost-work fair,
Where transient hues and fancied figures rise;
Wide-spouted o'er the hill, the frozen brook,
A livid tract, cold-gleaming on the morn;
The forest bent beneath the plumy wave;
And by the frost refined the whiter snow,
Incrusted hard, and sounding to the tread
Of early shepherd, as he pensive seeks
His pining flock, or from the mountain top,
Pleased with the slippery surface, swift descends.

'Tis done! dread Winter spreads his latest glooms,
And reigns tremendous o'er the conquer'd year.
How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends
His desolate domain. Behold, fond man!

See here thy pictured life; pass some few years,

Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength, Thy sober Autumn fading into age,

And pale concluding Winter comes at last,

And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled
Those dreams of greatness, those unsolid hopes

Of happiness, those longings after fame,
Those restless cares, those busy, bustling days,
Those gay-spent festive nights, those veering thoughts
Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life?
All now are vanish'd! Virtue sole survives,
Immortal, never-failing friend of man,

His guide to happiness on high. And see!
'Tis come, the glorious morn, the second birth
Of heaven and earth! Awakening Nature hears
The new-creating word, and starts to life,
In every heighten'd form, from pain and death
Forever free. The great eternal scheme,
Involving all, and in a perfect whole
Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads,
To Reason's eye refined clears up apace.
Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,
Confounded in the dust, adore that POWER
And WISDOM oft arraign'd; see now the cause
Why unassuming worth in secret lived,
And died neglected; why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul;
Why the lone widow and her orphans pined

In starving solitude, while LUXURY

In palaces lay straining her low thought

To form unreal wants; why heaven-born Truth,
And Moderation fair, wore the red marks
Of Superstition's scourge; why licensed Pain,
That cruel spoiler, that embosom'd foe,
Embitter'd all our bliss. Ye good distress'd!
Ye noble few, who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure! yet bear up a while
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deem'd evil, is no more:
The storms of Wintry Time will quickly pass,
And one unbounden Spring encircle all.

FAVORITISM is a foolish weakness at best, implying menta stagnation and narrowness. Yet if the poetry-reading constituency could be polled upon their preference for a single composition, it would be hard to justify any sneer at their assured choice of Gray's "Elegy." It is not narrow but universal; its measured music captivates the common ear; its scenes, incidents, reflections, are those of every-day life, and the strange sense of awe in contemplating the end of things fascinates the common mind in its finer moods. If Gray had written no more than this his name would be reverently inscribed among those of the great poets by popular suffrage, but he has other laurels, bestowed by his peers for poetical master-pieces of rarer workmanship, and therefore of more select fame.

A Londoner by birth, in 1716, and owing his Eton and Cambridge education to the exertions of his mother while separated from her tyrannical husband, Gray was fortunate in being taken by Horace Walpole on a tour through Italy and France. This deepened his love of the antique, and enriched his thought. As his father's death left him dependent on his own resources Gray remained as a Fellow in his chambers at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his ideally literary life. He communed with the ancients in the great libraries, wrote Latin verse, pursued various learned studies, and cultivated poetry for thirty placid years. In 1742 he published his "Ode to Spring," the "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," the "Ode to Adversity," and other

less familiar pieces. In 1750 he published, after slow and careful revisions, in which the manuscript had gone the rounds among his friends for several years, the "Elegy," which first bore the title, "Stanzas Wrote in a Country Churchyard." It ran through four editions in a year and was reproduced in three popular magazines. Six years later appeared his "Pindaric Odes," including two which have been accounted the foremost English compositions of their exalted order, the "Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard." These proved to be, and still are, above the level of the public taste. Gray refused the offer of the Laureateship. In 1768 he was appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, which post he accepted and retained till his death in 1771, but was unable to perform the active duties owing to ill-health. He was buried in the churchyard of Stoke Pogis, immortalized by his verse. Among his miscellaneous writings are many of literary value, including his translations of the old Norse legends which have been made more familiar by poets and scholars of the nineteenth century. Gray stands conspicuously a poet for poets. He esteemed his art before popularity, and yet it was his enviable fate to have given the common people the noblest popular poem in their simple language.

ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,

The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,