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The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires; E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"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 crossed in hopeless love.

"One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

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

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

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

293

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 gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a
friend.

No farther 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.

Thomas Gray

ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD
COMMEMORATION1

JULY 21, 1865

I

EAK-WINGED is song,

WEAK-WING that

Nor aims at that clear-ethered height

Whither the brave deed climbs for light:

We seem to do them wrong,

Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
Our trivial song to honor those who come
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,

A gracious memory to buoy up and save
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave
Of the unventurous throng.

1 Abridged.

II

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,

Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:

Their higher instinct knew

Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her

Where all may hope to find,

Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,

But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.
Where faith made whole with deed

Breathes its awakening breath

Into the lifeless creed,

They saw her plumed and mailed,

With sweet, stern face unveiled,

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

III

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;

What is there that abides

To make the next age better for the last?

Is earth too poor to give us

Something to live for here that shall outlive us?

Some more substantial boon

Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?

The little that we see

From doubt is never free;

The little that we do

Is but half-nobly true;

With our laborious hiving

What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,

Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss,
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,
After our little hour of strut and rave,

With all our pasteboard passions and desires,
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,
Are tossed pellmell together in the grave.
But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,
For in our likeness still we shape our fate.
Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,

Something that leaps life's narrow bars

To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;

A seed of sunshine that can leaven

Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars,

And glorify our clay

With light from fountains elder than the Day;
A conscience more divine than we,

A gladness fed with secret tears,
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;

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