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 even 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 names, their years, spelt by the 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; Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted Fires.

For thee, who mindful of the 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 can'st 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 frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,

He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) 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 (1716-1771)

Gray was one of the most careful artists who ever wrote in verse. He worked on the "Elegy" intermittently for seven years, and published it at last only to prevent its being inaccurately printed by an unscrupulous bookseller. Poe, in "The Philosophy of Composition," states that if he could have written any better stanzas than that which marks the climax of "The Raven," he would "without scruple, have purposely enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect." Gray discarded as unsuitable several stanzas which are as beautiful as many which he used. The first of the following omitted stanzas came after the eighteenth stanza, and the second immediately before the epitaph:

Hark how the sacred Calm, that broods around,
Bids ev'ry fierce tumultuous Passion cease,
In still small Accents whisp'ring from the Ground
A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace.

There scatter'd oft the earliest of the year

By hands unseen are frequent Violets found;
The Robin loves to build and warble there,

And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground.

Though never widely used, the heroic quatrain seems to be employed as frequently today as it has ever been. Three of Masefield's best poems, "August, 1914," "The River," and "The 'Wanderer," " are written in this stanza.

Vachel Lindsay and Edwin Arlington Robinson also use it with great skill. Sometimes, as in the following poem, they omit the rime in the first and third lines of each stanza. In this poem, as in his "Richard Cory," Robinson departs widely from the traditional use of this measure. It is astonishing what novel effects he obtains from the stately pensive stanza of the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

MR. FLOOD'S PARTY

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.

Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end

A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,

A phantom salutation of the dead

Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet

With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,

And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,

Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood—

For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."

So, for the time, apparently it did,

And Eben evidently thought so too;

For soon amid the silver loneliness

Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,

Until the whole harmonious landscape rang

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out, The last word wavered; and the song being done, He raised again the jug regretfully

And shook his head, and was again alone.

There was not much that was ahead of him,

And there was nothing in the town below