“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave.”
It was impossible to abstain from repeating the couplet, inevitable that it should recur to us, a majestic refrain, at each glimpse of the royal standard. We stopped in the broad shadow of a clump of oaks at the side of the road; passed through a turn-stile and followed a worn foot-path across the fields. The glimmer of a pale, graceful spire among the trees was our guide. About sixty yards beyond the stile is an oblong monument of granite, surmounted by a sarcophagus with steeply-slanting sides and a gabled cover. The paneled sides of the base are covered with selections from Gray’s poems. The turf slopes from this into a shallow moat, on the outer bank of which reclined two boys. They were well-favored fellows, dressed in well-made jackets and trousers, and had, altogether, the air of gentlemen’s sons. While one copied into a blank book the inscription on the side nearest him, his companion was at work upon a tolerable sketch of the monument.
“Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,”
read Caput from the monument. Then, glancing at the sarcophagus: “Can Gray himself be buried here? I thought his grave was in the church-yard?”
The boys wrote and sketched on, deaf and dumb. Caput approached the elder, who may have been fifteen years old.
“I beg your pardon! but can you tell me if this is the burial-place of the poet Gray?”