[442]. "Shepherds all, and Maidens fair, Fold your Flocks."
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight.
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:...
These lines and the stanzas that follow them in the Elegy in a Country Churchyard are as familiar as any in English, and may be found in almost every collection of poems. Here, "a figure on paper"—from a letter to a friend written by the author of them, Thomas Gray, on November 19, 1764, is a description—not of evening after the setting of the sun— but of a sun-rise as vivid as if one's own naked eye had watched its "Levee":