His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

27 'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful, wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

28 'One morn I miss'd him on the accustom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree ; Another came, nor yet beside the rill,

6

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:

29 The next, with dirges due, in sad array,

Slow through the churchway-path we saw him borne: Approach, and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn :'1

THE EPITAPH.

30 Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown :
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

31 Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to misery all he had-a tear;
He gain'd from Heaven-'twas all he wish'd-a
friend.

In early editions, the following stanza occurred :

There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.

32 No further seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God.

EPITAPH ON MRS JANE CLARKE.1

Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps ;
A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful Virtues loved to dwell:
Affection warm, and faith sincere,
And soft humanity were there.
In agony, in death resign'd,

She felt the wound she left behind.

Her infant image here below

Sits smiling on a father's woe:

Whom what awaits while yet he strays

Along the lonely vale of days?

A pang, to secret sorrow dear,

A sigh, an unavailing tear,

Till time shall every grief remove

With life, with memory, and with love.

STANZAS,

SUGGESTED BY A VIEW OF THE SEAT AND RUINS AT
KINGSGATE, IN KENT, 1766.

1 OLD, and abandon'd by each venal friend,
Here Holland took the pious resolution,

2 Mrs Jane Clarke: this lady, the wife of Dr Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.

To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.

2 On this congenial spot he fix'd his choice;

Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice,

And mariners, though shipwreck'd, fear to land.

3 Here reign the blustering North, and blasting East, No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;

Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new terrors still to bring.

1 Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
Turrets and arches nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.

5Ah!' said the sighing peer, had Bute been true, Nor C's, nor B-d's promises been vain, Far other scenes than this had graced our view, And realised the horrors which we feign.

6 Purged by the sword, and purified by fire,

Then had we seen proud London's hated walls: Owls should have hooted in St Peter's choir, And foxes stunk and litter'd in St Paul's.'

TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS.

THIRD in the labours of the disc came on,
With sturdy step and slow, Hippomedon;

3

10

Artful and strong he poised the well-known weight,
By Phlegyas warn'd, and fired by Mnestheus' fate,
That to avoid and this to emulate.

His vigorous arm he tried before he flung,
Braced all his nerves, and every sinew strung,
Then with a tempest's whirl and wary eye
Pursued his cast, and hurl'd the orb on high;
The orb on high, tenacious of its course,
True to the mighty arm that gave it force,
Far overleaps all bound, and joys to see
Its ancient lord secure of victory:

The theatre's green height and woody wall
Tremble ere it precipitates its fall;

The ponderous mass sinks in the cleaving ground,
While vales and woods and echoing hills rebound.
As when, from Etna's smoking summit broke,
The eyeless Cyclops heaved the craggy rock,
Where Ocean frets beneath the dashing oar,
And parting surges round the vessel roar;
"Twas there he aim'd the meditated harm,
And scarce Ulysses 'scaped his giant arm.
A tiger's pride the victor bore away,
With native spots and artful labour gay,
A shining border round the margin roll'd,
And calm'd the terrors of his claws in gold.
CAMBRIDGE, May 8, 1736.

GRAY ON HIMSELF.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune;

Could love and could hate, so was thought something odd;
No very great wit, he believed in a God;

A post or a pension he did not desire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

END OF GRAY'S POEMS.