Discarded Stanzas
In the twilight we hastily sketch Gray's "ivy-mantled tower," and then sit by his tomb gazing upon the fading landscape and recalling the life of this divine poet and the lines of the matchless poem which was drafted here and with exquisite care revised and polished year after year before it was given to the world. It may not be generally known that he discarded six stanzas from the original draft,—among them this, written as the fourth stanza:
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"Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease; In still small accents whispering from the ground A grateful earnest of eternal peace;" |
this, from the reply of the "hoary-headed swain:"
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"Him have we seen the greenwood side along While o'er the heath we hied, our labor done, Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun;" |
and this, from the description of the poet's grave:
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"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." |
We may judge what was the high standard of Gray, and what the transcending quality of the finished poem from which its author could, after years of deliberation, reject such stanzas. The Elegy is the expression in divinest poetry of the best conceptions of a noble soul upon the most serious topic on which human thought can dwell. No wonder that the world has literally learned by heart those precious lines; that they are the solace of the thoughtful and the bereft in every clime where mortals meditate on death; that the brave Wolfe, on the way to his triumphal death, should recite them in the darkness and declare he had rather be their author than the victor in the morrow's battle; that the great Webster, on his death-bed, should beg to hear them, and die at last with their melody sounding in his ears.
As the glow fades out of the darkening sky, the birds in the leafy elms one by one cease their songs, "the lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea" to distant folds, the "drowsy tinklings" grow fainter, the summer wind sighing among the trees dies with the day, and the scene which seemed still before is noiseless now. In this hush we are content to leave this deathless poet and the spot he loved. We gather ivy from the old wall and a spray from the boughs of his dreaming yew, and take our way back to the busy haunts of men.