Yet lives there one whose heedless eye But thou lorn stream, whose sullen tide And see the fairy valleys fade, Dun night has veiled the solemn view! The genial meads, assigned to bless Long, long thy stone and pointed clay Gray. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH YARD. THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, Beneath those rugged elms, that yew trees shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cocks shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their harrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team a-field! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! 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. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, I Can storied urn and animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid, Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre: But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear : Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast, The applause of listening senates to command, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind : The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the muse's flame. Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife, way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculptures deckt, Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, And many a holy text around she strews, For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, |