of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rathert thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed the whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tomb-stones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another ; the whole history of his life being comprehended in these two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons, who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born, and that they died.

2. Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave, and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull, intermixed with a kind of fresh, *moldering earth, that, sometime or other, had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself, what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled among one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

3. After having thus surveyed this magazine of mortality, as it were in the lump, I examined it more particularly, by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments, which are raised in every quarter of that ancient +fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant tepitaphs, that if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed, in Greek or Hebrew, and, by that means, are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war had

filled the church with many of those uninhabited *monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons, whose bodies were, perhaps, buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.

4. I know, that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations; but, for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can, therefore, take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure, as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means, I can improve myself with those objects, which others consider with terror.

5. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for them, whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who +deposed them, when I see rival wits lying side by side, or holy men that divided the world by their contests and disputes, I reflect, with sorrow and astonishment, on the little *competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, some, six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be *cotemporaries, and make our appearance together.

LXXXIV. — ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD.
FROM GRAY.

THOMAS GRAY, an English poet, was born 1716, and was educated at Cambridge. The Elegy, Written in a Country Church-yard, is the most celebrated and popular of his poems. He died in 1771.

1. THE curfew tolls the +knell of parting day!
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The plowman homeward *plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

2. Now fades the glimm'ring 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 :

3. Save, that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,

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

4. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mold'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the thamlet sleep.

5. The breezy call of +incense-breathing morn,

The swallow, twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

6. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care;

Nor children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

7. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;

Their furrow oft the stubborn +glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

8. Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

9. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await, alike, the tinevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

10. Nor you, ye proud, timpute to these the fault,
If mem'ry o'er their tomb no ttrophies raise,
Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vaul
The pealing tanthem swells the note of praise.

11. Can storied urn or animated +bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

12. Perhaps, in this neglected spot, is laid

Some heart once pregnant with +celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to tecstasy the living lyre.

13. But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill +penury repress'd their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

14. Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

15. Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
16. The applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

17. Their lot forbade; nor, circumscribed alone
Their glowing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

18. The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide;
To quench the blushes of +ingenuous shame;
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride,

With tincense kindled at the muse's flame.

19. Far from the madding crowd's tignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray: Along the cool, tsequester'd vale of life,

They kept the noiseless +tenor of their way.

20. Yet e'en these bones, from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still, erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

21. Their names, their years, spell'd by the unletter'd muse, The place of fame and elegy supply;

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

22. 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, ling'ring look behind?

23. 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.

24. For thee, who, mindful of the unhonor'd dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate,
If, chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

25. Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn,
Brushing, with hasty step, the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
26. There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,

That wreathes its old, tfantastic roots so high,
His listless length, at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that bubbles by.

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

Mutt'ring 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 fav'rite tree:
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the woods was he.

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

Slow through the church-yard path, we saw him borne. Approach, and read (for thou canst read) the lay. 'Graved on the stone beneath yon a-ged thorn."

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: