until my life, bereaved of its first affection, be over.
In Poem xvii., 5, the same line occurs—“Till all my widow’d race be run,” and it agrees with St. Paul’s declaration, 2 Tim., iv., 7, “I have finished my course.” The words race and course are synonymous, and refer to the foot-races of the ancients. “More than my brothers are to me,” is repeated in P. lxxix., 1.
X.
Very beautifully is the picture continued of the ship’s passage, and he appeals to it for safely conducting
“Thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.”
The placid scene, which he had imagined as attending the vessel, harmonizes with the home-bred fancy, that it is sweeter
“To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains;”
that is, to be buried in the open churchyard;
“Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God.”[12]
that is, in the chancel of the church, near the altar rails; than if, together with the ship, “the roaring wells” of the sea