"And thou, who, mindful of the unhonored Dead,
Dost, in these Notes, their artless Tale relate,
By Night and lonely Contemplation led
To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate;
"Hark, how the sacred Calm that broods around
Bids every fierce, tumultuous Passion cease,
In still, small Accents whispering from the Ground
A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace.
"No more with Reason and thyself at Strife,
Give anxious Cares and useless Wishes room;
But through the cool, sequestered Vale of Life
Pursue the silent Tenor of thy Doom."
After these stanzas, according to the Fraser manuscript, were to follow these lines, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere:—
"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more,
By sympathetic Musings here delayed,
With vain though kind Enquiry shall explore
Thy once-loved Haunt, thy long-neglected Shade,
"Haply," etc.
But Gray soon dispensed with this feeble stanza, and made a new one by changing it into the one beginning:—
"For thee, who mindful."
The ninety-ninth and one hundredth lines stand in the Fraser manuscript—
"With hasty footsteps brush the dews away
On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn."