The following stanza is noticeable for the inversions so frequent in Gray, and which he had, perhaps, unconsciously adopted from his familiarity with the classics. He afterward omitted it:—
"Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o'er the heath we hied, our labors done.
Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun."
In the manuscript the word is spelled "whistful." In line 101, "hoary beech" is corrected to "spreading beech," and afterward to "nodding beech."
Line 113—"Dirges meet" was changed to "dirges dire;" and after 116 came the beautiful stanza, afterward omitted by Gray as being de trop in this place:—
"There, scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
Even in this verse there were two corrections. "Robin" was altered in the Fraser manuscript into "redbreast," and "frequent violets" into "showers of violets."
One of the most curious accidents to which this famous poem has been subjected was an erroneous change made in the early editions, which has been propagated almost to our time. In the stanza beginning—
"The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power,"
Gray wrote
"Awaits alike the inevitable Hour."