Journeys Through Bookland Volume Vi Part 46

[362-4] The poem is supposed to have been written in the yard of Stoke-Pogis church, a little building with a square tower, the whole covered with a riotous growth of ivy vines. The church is in the country, not many miles from Windsor Castle; and even to this day the beautiful landscape preserves the rural charms it had in Gray's time. We must not suppose that Gray actually sat in the churchyard and wrote his lines. As a matter of fact, he was a very careful and painstaking writer, and for eight years was at work on this poem, selecting each word so that it should express just the shade of meaning he wanted and give the perfect melody he sought. However, he did begin the poem at Stoke in October or November of 1742 and continued it there in November, 1749; but it was finished in Cambridge in June, 1750.

[362-5] _Reign_ here means _dominion_ or _possessions_. Why is the bird called a _moping_ owl? Why is her reign _solitary_? What word is understood after _such_ in the third line of this stanza?

[362-6] _Rude_ means _uneducated_, _uncultured_, not _ill-mannered_.

[362-7] A clarion is a loud, clear-sounding trumpet.

[362-8] In the church are the tombs of the wealthy and t.i.tled of the neighborhood, and in the building and on the walls are monuments that tell the virtues of the lordly dead. It is outside, however, under the sod, in their narrow cells, that the virtuous poor, the real subjects of the poet's thoughts, lie in quiet slumbers.

[362-9] What evening cares has the busy housewife? Was she making the clothes of her children, knitting, mending, darning, after the supper dishes were put away?

[363-10] Where were the children? Were they waiting for their father's return? To whom would they run to tell of his coming?

[363-11] The _glebe_ is the turf. Why should it be called _stubborn_?

[363-12] _Jocund_ means _joyful_.

[363-13] The word _Ambition_ begins with a capital letter because Gray speaks of ambition as though it were a person. The line means, "Let not ambitious persons speak lightly of the work the rude forefathers did."

[363-14] The inevitable hour (death) alike awaits the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, and all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave.

[363-15] This is perhaps the most famous stanza in the poem. The following story is told of General Wolfe as he was leading his troops to the daring a.s.sault on Quebec in 1759: "At past midnight, when the heavens were hung black with clouds, and the boats were floating silently back with the tide to the intended landing-place at the chosen ascent to the Plains of Abraham, he repeated in low tones to the officers around him this touching stanza of Gray's _Elegy_. 'Now, gentlemen,' said Wolfe, 'I would rather be the author of that poem than the possessor of the glory of beating the French to-morrow!' He fell the next day, and expired just as the shouts of the victory of the English fell upon his almost unconscious ears."

[364-16] Now, an aisle is the pa.s.sageway between the pews or the seats in a church or other public hall: in the poem it means the pa.s.sageways running to the sides of the main body of the church.

[364-17] A storied urn is an urn-shaped monument on which are inscribed the virtues of the dead. Why should a _bust_ be called _animated_? What is the _mansion_ of _the fleeting breath_?

[364-18] In this instance _provoke_ means what it originally meant in the Latin language; namely, _call forth_.

[364-19] The line means, "Some heart once filled with the heavenly inspiration."

[364-20] A poet or musician is said to sing, and the lyre is the instrument with which the ancients accompanied their songs. _To wake to ecstasy the living lyre_ is to write the n.o.blest poetry, to sing the most inspired songs.

[364-21] The books of the ancients were rolls of ma.n.u.scripts. Did any of those persons resting in this neglected spot ever write great poetry, rule empires or sing inspiring songs? If not, what prevented them from doing such things if they had the ability?

[365-22] At first this stanza was written thus:

"Some village Cato, who with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Tully here may rest; Some Caesar guiltless of his country's blood."

It is interesting to notice that at his first writing Gray selected three of the famous men of antiquity, but in his revision he subst.i.tuted the names of three of his own countrymen. Who were Hampden, Milton and Cromwell?

[365-23] The three stanzas beginning at this point make but one sentence. Turned into prose the sentence would read: "Their lot forbade them to command the applause of listening senates, to despise the threats of pain and ruin, to scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, and read their history in a nation's eyes: their lot not only circ.u.mscribed their growing virtues but confined their crimes as well; it forbade them to wade through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy on mankind, to hide the struggling pangs of conscious truth, to quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, and to heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride with incense kindled at the Muse's flame."

[365-24] This line means that they could not become rulers by fighting and killing their fellowmen as Napoleon did not long afterward.

[366-25] Many of the English poets wrote in praise of the wealthy and t.i.tled in order to be paid or favored by the men they flattered. Gray thinks that such conduct is disgraceful, and rejoices that the rude forefathers of the hamlet were prevented from writing poetry for such an end. The Greeks thought poetry was inspired by one of the Muses, and genius is often spoken as a flame.

[366-26] _Madding_ means _excited_ or _raging_.

[366-27] The _frail memorials_ were simple headstones, similar to those one may see in any country graveyard in America. On such headstones may often be seen _shapeless sculpture_ that would almost provoke a smile, were it not for its pathetic meaning. A picture of Stoke-Pogis churchyard shows many stories of the ordinary type.

[366-28] The rhymes were _uncouth_ in the sense that they were unlearned and unpolished.

[366-29] What facts were inscribed on the headstones? _Elegy_ here means _praise_. Where were the texts strewn? Why were the texts called _holy?_ What was the nature of the texts? Can you think of one that might have been used?

[367-30] This is one of the difficult stanzas, and there is some dispute as to its exact meaning, owing to the phrase, _to dumb forgetfulness a prey_. Perhaps the correct meaning is shown in the following prose version: "For who has ever died (resigned this pleasing, anxious being, left the warm precincts of this cheerful day), a prey to dumb forgetfulness, and cast not one longing, lingering look behind?"

[367-31] _Thee_ refers to the poet, Gray himself. The remainder of the poem is personal. Summed up briefly it means that perhaps a sympathetic soul may some day come to inquire as to the poet's fate, and will be told by some h.o.a.ry-headed swain a few of the poet's habits, and then will have pointed out to him the poet's own grave, on which may be read his epitaph.

[368-32] _Due_ means _appropriate_ or _proper_.

[368-33] As first written, the poem contained the following stanza, placed before the epitaph; but in the final revision Gray rejected it as unworthy. It seems a very critical taste that would reject such lines as these:

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found: The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

THE SHIPWRECK[371-1]

_By_ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

I went down, and drank my fill; and then came up, and got a blink at the moon; and then down again. They say a man sinks the third time for good.

I cannot be made like other folk, then, for I would not like to write how often I went down or how often I came up again. All the while, I was being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor afraid.

Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat.

And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself.

It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far I had traveled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low down to see.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I FOUND I WAS HOLDING TO A SPAR]

While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us, where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide-race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.

I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning. The sh.o.r.es of Earraid were close in; I could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the rocks.

"Well," thought I to myself, "if I cannot get as far as that, it's strange."

I had no skill of swimming; but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and kicked out with both feet, I soon began to find that I was moving. Hard work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking and splashing, I had got well in between the points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills.

The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon shone clear, and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so shallow that I could leave the yard and wade ash.o.r.e upon my feet, I cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both at least, I was; tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to G.o.d, as I trust I have been often, though never with more cause.

With my stepping ash.o.r.e, I began the most unhappy part of my adventures.

It was half-past twelve in the morning, and though the wind was broken by the land, it was a cold night. I dared not sit down (for I thought I should have frozen), but took off my shoes and walked to and fro upon the sand, barefoot and beating my breast with infinite weariness. There was no sound of man or cattle; not a c.o.c.k crew, though it was about the hour of their first waking; only the surf broke outside in the distance, which put me in mind of my perils. To walk by the sea at that hour of the morning, and in a place so desert-like and lonesome, struck me with a kind of fear.